JC-NRLF 


N 


AMBRQj] 


08. 

LI  B  R  ARY 

OF 

UNIVERSIT          ;  FORNIA. 

' 


Received 
A  ccessions  No .//  #    Shelf  No . 


\ 


THE  DEVELOPMENT 


ROMAN    CONSTITUTION 


BY 

AMBROSE   f  IGHE 

FORMERLY  TUTOR  AND   DOUGLAS  FELLOW  AT  YALE  COLLEGE 


OT  THE 

TJHIVBRSITY 


NEW  YORK 

D.   APPLETON    AND   COMPANY 
1889 


COPYRIGHT,  1886, 
BY  D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY. 


PREFACE. 


DURING  my  tutorship  at  Yale  College,  I  offered 
several  courses,  all  of  which  had  more  or  less  to 
do  with  Roman  history.  Roman  history  divides  it 
self  quite  naturally  into  three  periods,  the  first  of 
which  extends  to  the  conclusion  of  the  second 
Punic  war.  In  this  early  time  the  evidence  is 
largely  philological.  Any  intelligent  criticism  of  it 
is,  therefore,  impossible  without  some  knowledge  of 
how  language  lives  and  grows.  The  root,  the  stem, 
the  termination,  and  the  derivation,  which  are  so 
incomprehensible  to  the  Philistine,  have  here  the 
greatest  importance.  For  this  reason,  in  one  of 
my  courses,  an  attempt  was  made  to  fix  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Latin  language  by  some  discussion  of 
the  nature  of  language,  the  relation  of  languages, 
and  the  principles  of  euphony,  and  by  applying 
these  general  ideas  to  Latin  word-formation,  ety- 
mology, and  syntax.  After  reasonable  opportuni- 
ties in  this  direction,  I  took  it  that  one  would  be 
ready  to  learn  something  about  the  development  of 
the  Roman  state,  and  of  its  political,  legal,  and  re- 
ligious institutions.  This  is  a  very  large  subject, 


iv  PREFACE. 

and,  in  the  few  weeks  which  I  had  at  my  command, 
a  simple  line  of  thought  only  could  be  followed. 
With  a  view  to  economizing  time  and  effort,  I  pre- 
pared for  the  use  of  my  classes  a  series  of  tracts  on 
leading  points  in  the  history  of  the  period  covered. 
The  idea  was  not  original,  but  had  been  employed 
before  with  much  success  by  Mr.  E.  D.  Robbins,  a 
former  incumbent  of  the  position  which  I  held. 
As  resorted  to  by  myself,  this  method  of  instruc- 
tion was  by  no  means  an  exclusive  one.  Wherever 
it  seemed  more  profitable  for  the  student  to  cover 
the  ground  in  another  way  it  was  followed.  Where 
there  was  no  complexity  or  great  continuity  of 
thought,  and  the  chief  importance  attached  to  the 
illustrations,  the  lecture  was  found  the  most  eco- 
nomical medium  of  instruction.  On  other  points 
there  was  accessible  much  material  in  standard 
books  of  reference  in  the  possession  of  the  stu- 
dent. And  in  general,  in  what  I  printed,  I  aimed 
simply  to  give  an  outline  of  the  matter  treated,  re- 
lying on  the  familiar  class-room  devices  to  give 
color  and  accuracy  to  the  picture.  The  following 
pages  are  these  tracts  in  a  somewhat  revised  form. 

I  have  thought  it  worth  while  to  give  thus,  at 
length,  the  history  of  this  book's  composition,  be- 
cause its  possibilities  and  its  limitations  are  in  this 
way  suggested.  I  used  to,  perhaps,  delude  myself 
with  the  thought  that  some  of  the  men  who  took 


PREFACE.  v 

my  courses  got  a  better  and  more  scientific  notion 
of  why  Rome  was  great  from  the  use  of  my  tracts 
than  they  would  have  from  a  dictionary  of  Roman 
antiquities.  This  was  partly  because  the  omission 
of  details  made  it  easy  to  follow  the  thread  of  de- 
velopment, and  to  see  the  general  in  the  particular ; 
and  because,  in  the  second  place,  it  was  possible 
to  constantly  call  their  attention  to  the  nature  of 
the  evidence  in  support  of  the  positions  successive- 
ly taken.  The  ideal  text-book  in  Roman  history 
will  be  one  which,  in  one  part,  will  give  a  conserva- 
tive statement  of  what  some  prominent  scholar 
takes  to  be  true,  and  in  its  notes  will  collate  all  intel- 
ligent views  which  are  in  conflict  with  this,  and  per- 
haps weigh  their  claims  to  consideration.  In  what 
I  have  written,  I  have  followed  Mommsen  very 
closely  wherever  he  throws  any  light  at  all  on  the 
subjects  discussed.  I  have  done  this  in  some  cases 
in  spite  of  my  own  conviction  that  he  is  in  error. 
In  one  or  two  instances  where  this  has  been  so,  I 
have  hinted  at  the  better  opinion.  Thus,  for  ex- 
ample, in  the  second  chapter,  on  the  structure  of 
ancient  society,  I  have  no  faith  at  all  in  the  histori- 
cal accuracy  of  the  notion  that  the  gens  was  a 
union  of  kinsmen.  I  am  myself  a  disciple  of  the 
anthropological  school,  so  far  as  any  such  school 
exists.  But  in  view  of  the  fact  that  Mommsen 
seems  to  sympathize  with  the  other  theory,  and  of 


vi  PREFACE. 

the  general  uncertainty  on  the  question,  I  consid- 
ered it  too  radical  a  course  to  give  the  chief  promi- 
nence to  its  creed,  although  I  feel  it  to  be  the  more 
reasonable  one,  and  have  contented  myself  with 
referring  to  its  existence.  In  the  same  way  I  have 
excepted  to  Mommsen's  idea  as  to  the  primitive 
constitution  of  the  comitia  centuriata.  Where,  on 
the  other  hand,  I  have  found  myself  in  doubt 
among  conflicting  views,  I  have  adopted  Momm- 
sen's outright.  Thus  I  think  that  the  unprejudiced 
student,  after  reading  Mommsen's  argument  for 
the  existence  of  the  concilium  tributum  plebis*  will 
be  inclined  to  enter  a  verdict  of  "not  proven." 
But  I  have  accepted  it  simply  on  the  basis  of  au- 
thority. 

I  should  approach  nearer  to  my  ideal,  if,  in  ad- 
dition to  thus  attempting  to  follow  one  authority,  I 
had  added  at  least  the  bibliography  which  I  gave 
to  my  classes  as  a  guide  to  the  best  which  had  been 
said  and  thought  on  the  general  subject.  This, 
however,  would  swell  the  size  of  the  volume  be- 
yond the  primer  limit,  as  well  as  be  the  least  bit 
presumptuous,  in  as  far  as  it  would  attempt  to  call 
the  attention  of  the  teaching  profession  to  a  list  of 
authorities,  the  evidence  of  whose  use  they  will  readi- 
ly recognize  when  they  examine  what  I  have  writ- 
ten. I  have  felt  quite  free  in  drawing  on  every  ac- 

*  "  Forschungen." 


PREFACE.  vii 

cessible  source  of  information,  and  my  book  is  noth- 
ing more  than  a  compilation.  Some  parts  are  obvi- 
ous translations  of  Mommsen  and  Lange,  and  even 
some  have  been  made  up  from  contemporary  litera- 
ture of  the  kind  which  appears  in  the  magazines. 
I  have  received  the  greatest  help  in  what  I  have 
said  of  the  Roman  religion  from  an  admirable  arti- 
cle by  Professor  W.  F.  Allen  on  "  The  Religion  of 
the  Ancient  Romans,"  in  Volume  CXIII  of  the 
"  North  American  Review."  The  line  of  thought 
in  reference  to  the  early  commercial  greatness  of 
Rome  was  suggested  by  an  essay  of  Goldwin 
Smith's,  from  which  I  have  borrowed  without  stint, 
and,  not  to  carry  this  enumeration  too  far,  every 
one  who  reads  my  first  chapter  will  see  how  I  am 
indebted  there  to  the  introduction  to  J.  R.  Seeley's 
edition  of  Livy's  first  book. 

If  the  volume  were  ambitious  enough  to  sup- 
port a  dedication,  I  should  inscribe  it  to  the  five 
hundred  young  men  who  in  one  course  or  another 
studied  Roman  history  with  me  at  Yale  College.  I 
found  in  them  in  full  measure  the  qualities  which 
make  men  pleasant  companions  and  human  inter- 
course a  delight.  They  were  courteous,  generous, 
appreciative,  intelligent,  and  enthusiastic.  It  was  a 
great  privilege  to  meet  them  as  I  did,  and  my  rec- 
ollections of  them  are  of  the  happiest  nature. 

ST.  PAUL,  MINNESOTA,  June,  1886. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE   SOURCES   OF   EARLY   ROMAN   HISTORY. 

PAGE 

The  Credibility  of  Early  Roman  History  ....  7 
These  Reasons  for  Skepticism  explained  ....  8 
The  Historians  and  Annalists  of  Early  Rome  .  .  .10 
The  Sources  of  the  Legendary  History  of  Rome  .  .11 

Etiological  Myths       .         . 12 

The  Teachings  of  Euhemerus    ......     14 

The  Contribution  of  Deliberate  Invention         .         .         .     I  5 
Can  we  know  anything,  then,  about  Early  Roman  His- 
tory?   17 

How  the  Science  of  Language  helps  us  .         .         .18 

Etymological  Evidence       .         .         .         .         .         .         .     20 

The  Contribution  of  Comparative  Law      .         .         .         .22 

Inferences  from  the  Later  History  of  the  City  .  .  .24 
What  we  can  learn  from  these  Sources  .  .  .  .25 

CHAPTER    II. 

THE   STRUCTURE   OF   ANCIENT   SOCIETY. 

The  Roman  Family 28 

The  Beginnings  of  Rome  .         .         .  .         .         .29 


x  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

What  was  a  Clan  ? 31 

The  Patriarchal  Theory      .         .         .         .         .         .         .32 

The  Application  of  these  Criticisms  to  Roman  History     .     34 
The  Early  Roman  Religion       .         .         .         .         .         .     35 

The  Early  Romans'  Ideas  about  the  Dead  .  .  .38 
The  Influence  of  these  Beliefs  within  the  Family  .  .  40 
The  Influence  of  these  Beliefs  without  the  Family  .  .41 
The  City  of  Rome 42 


CHAPTER   III. 

ROME   UNDER   THE   KINGS. 

The  Power  of  the  King 44 

Restrictions  on  the  King's  Power 45 

The  Comitia  Curiata ........  47 

The  Functions  of  the  Comitia  Curiata       .         .         .         .  49 

The  Senate  and  its  Functions    ......  49 

The  Early  Greatness  of  Rome   .         .         .         .         .         .  51 

The  Evidences  of  this  Early  Commercial  Greatness  .         .  52 

The  Plebeians 54 

The  Primitive  Political  Condition  of  the  Plebeians   .         -57 

CHAPTER   IV. 

THE  EARLIEST   REFORMS   IN   THE   ROMAN   CONSTITUTION. 

Ths  Burdens  of  Citizenship        ......     59 

The  Servian  Classification          ......     60 

How  the  Exercitus  of  Servius  became  the  Comitia  Cen- 

turiata .         .62 

The  Establishment  of  the  Consular  Government        .         .     63 

The  Dictator  and  the  Quaestors 65 

What  the  Plebeians  gained  by  these  Changes    .         .         .66 


CONTENTS.  xi 

CHAPTER  V. 

THE  FIGHT  WITHOUT   THE   CITY. 

PAGE 

The  Non-Italian  Races  of  Italy 68 

The  Italian  Races  of  Italy         .         .         .         .         .         .69 

The  Latin  League 70 

The  Conquest  of  Italy 71 

The  Greatness  of  Rome 74 

What  Rome  learned  in  these  Wars 76 

The  Policy  of  Incorporation 78 

The  Subject  Communities  of  Italy     .         .         .        .         .80 

Rome's  Colonial  System    .......     82 

The  Roman  Roads 83 

CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   FIGHT   WITHIN   THE   CITY. 

Primitive  Ideas  about  Property  .....  85 
The  Land  System  of  the  Romans  .  .  .  .  .86 

The  Lands  acquired  in  War 87 

The  State's  Lands  under  the  Consular  Government  .  .  88 
The  Early  Agrarian  Troubles  ......  90 

The  Tribunes  of  the  Plebs 91 

The  Concilium  Tributum  Plebis        .         .         .         .         .92 

How  the  Tribuneship  worked  in  Practice          .        .         .94 
The  Decemvirate        ........     95 

The  Influence  of  the  Decemvi rate's  Legislation  on  the 

Development  of  Roman  Law 96 

The  Political  Effect  of  the  Decemvirate's  Legislation        .     98 
The  Consular  Tribunes      .......  100 

The  Military  Quaestor,  the  Censor,  the  Praetor,  and  the 

Curule  y£dile 101 


xii  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

The  Greater  Gods  of  the  Romans      .....  102 

The  Greek  Modifications  of  the  Roman  Religion      .         .  105 

The  Value  of  this  Transformation     .....  106 

The  Priesthoods 108 

The  End  of  the  Struggle no 

The  Economic  Results  of  the  Struggle      .         .         .         .in 

The  Social  Results  of  the  Struggle 112 

CHAPTER  VII. 

HOW   ROME  WAS   GOVERNED   AT    THE   TIME    OF    THE    SECOND 
PUNIC   WAR. 

The  Nobilitas 114 

The  Constitution  of  the  Senate  .  .  .  .  .115 
The  Theoretical  Functions  of  the  Senate  .  .  .  .  117 
The  Popular  Assemblies  enumerated  .  .  .  .118 

The  Composition  of  a  Tribe 119 

The  Censors'  Control  over  the  Tribes  .  .  .  .120 
The  Theoretical  Powers  of  the  Popular  Assemblies  .  .  122 
The  Magistrates'  Control  over  the  Popular  Assemblies  .  123 
The  Senate's  Control  over  the  Magistrates  .  .  .125 

The  Senate's  Executive  Power 127 

The  Rule  of  the  Nobilitas 128 

The  Transition  to  the  Empire 13° 


EVELOPMENT 


OF   THE 

ROMAN    CONSTITUTION 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE   SOURCES   OF   EARLY    ROMAN    HISTORY. 

i.  The  Credibility  of  Early  Roman  His- 
tory.— No  one  in  these  days,  who  has  studied  the 
subject  with  any  care,  believes  that  the  stories  about 
the  kings  and  early  heroes  of  Rome  are  quite  true 
in  the  form  in  which  we  have  received  them  from 
the  Greek  and  Latin  writers.  Some  scholars  dis- 
pose of  them  curtly  as  a  mass  of  fables,  unworthy 
of  serious  study.  Others  think  that,  if  they  be 
analyzed  and  sifted,  some  truth  can  be  found  in 
them  amid  much  which  is  false.  A  few  divide  them 
into  two  parts — the  larger  one  made  up  of  facts 
and  the  smaller  of  fictions.  But  no  one,  as  we  have 
said,  accepts  them  as  a  whole  without  question.  This 
general  skepticism,  however,  dates  no  further  back 
than  the  early  part  of  the  present  century.  Then, 
under  the  influence  of  a  German  scholar,  Niebuhr 
by  name,  the  scientific  criticism  of  Roman  history 
first  began.  Before  this  time  Romulus  and  his  six 
successors  on  the  Roman  throne  were  no  more 
2 


8  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

mythical  in  the  general  view  than  any  seven  medi- 
aeval sovereigns  of  France  or  England,  and  Servius 
Tullius  was  as  historical  a  statesman  as  Oliver 
Cromwell  or  Cardinal  Richelieu.  But,  since  there 
has  been  direct  and  dispassionate  inquiry  into  the 
character  and  authority  of  these  stories,  it  has  been 
made  very  clear  that  many  of  them  at  any  rate 
ought  not  to  be  regarded  in  the  same  light  as  events 
of  more  recent  times,  and  this  for  several  reasons. 
One  reason  is,  that  they  tell  largely  of  things  which 
are  very  improbable  because  inconsistent  with  what 
we  have  good  grounds  for  regarding  as  laws  of  na- 
ture. Another  is,  that  even  these  improbable  stories 
destroy  themselves  by  their  inconsistencies  and  con- 
tradictions. And  a  third  is,  that  they  are  unsup- 
ported by  any  contemporary  evidence. 

2.  These  Reasons  for  Skepticism  ex- 
plained.— Of  course,  there  would  be  no  sufficient 
ground  for  the  rejection  of  any  particular  legend  if 
skepticism  in  regard  to  it  were  based  on  any  one 
of  these  reasons  alone.  It  is  only  when  we  find 
two  or  more  of  them  uniting  to  undermine  our  be- 
lief, that  we  are  justified  in  yielding  to  them.  For 
example,  we  can  not  with  accuracy  say  that  any 
event  is  intrinsically  impossible.  The  great  major- 
ity of  people  in  the  world  will  accept  on  sufficient 
evidence  any  consistent  story,  no  matter  how  con- 
trary it  is  to  their  own  experience.  Or,  again,  if  a 
story  is  reasonable  and  well  vouched  for,  an  in- 
consistency or  two  in  it  can  be  explained  away  or 
passed  over.  Or,  finally,  a  reasonable,  consistent, 
and  uncontradicted  story,  which  could  be  handed 


SOURCES  OF  EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY.      g 

down  by  word  of  mouth,  does  not  need  written  tes- 
timony to  secure  for  it  a  hearing  with  fair-minded 
men.  To  make  a  specific  application  of  these  prin- 
ciples, it  is,  to  say  the  least,  very  unlikely  that  the 
city  of  Rome  was  built  in  the  year  753  B.  c.  by  two 
brothers,  Romulus  and  Remus,  who,  though  the 
sons  of  a  god,  were  nursed  by  a  wolf.  The  intrinsic 
difficulties  of  such  a  tale  would  seem  sufficient  to 
destroy  it.  Cities,  according  to  general  human  ex- 
perience, are  not  built,  but  grow — and  that,  too,  not 
by  the  work  of  one  or  two  men  in  a  short  time,  but 
during  the  course  of  many  years  and  gradually.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  however  unusual  it  may  be  for 
sons  of  gods  to  be  nursed  by  wolves  and  to  become 
the  founders  of  cities,  here  may  have  been  an  excep- 
tion to  all  the  ordinary  presumptions,  and,  if  the 
story  be  uncontradicted  and  well  authenticated,  we 
may  take  it  as  an  exception.  But,  in  point  of  fact, 
we  have  received  from  the  ancients  twenty-four  other 
accounts  of  the  founding  of  Rome,  which  are  wholly 
inconsistent  with  this,  the  best  known  one,  and  with 
each  other.  What,  then,  shall  we  do  ?  Shall  we  re- 
ject them  all?  No,  it  may  be  answered;  we  should 
accept  that  which  rests  on  the  best  evidence.  But, 
as  we  shall  presently  show,  there  is  no  evidence 
which  is  worth  anything  for  any  of  them.  This, 
then,  is  a  legend,  unreasonable  a  priori,  and  contra- 
dicted by  more  than  a  score  of  others,  which  are 
equally  well  supported,  but  for  all  of  which,  at  the 
same  time,  there  is  no  support  of  any  value.  Stories 
of  such  sort,  it  will  be  readily  granted,  are  not  wor- 
thy of  belief. 


io  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

3.  The  Historians  and  Annalists  of  Early 
Rome. — When  we  question  in  this  way  the  evi- 
dence on  which  all  these  tales  are  based,  we  imply 
that  we  attach  but  little  importance  to  the  testi- 
mony of  the  ancient  authors  about  this  early  period, 
but  we  think  that  a  brief  consideration  will  make 
it  quite  clear  that  we  are  justified  in  this.  We  get 
our  knowledge  of  the  legendary  history  of  Rome 
chiefly  from  Livy  and  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus. 
Other  ancient  writers,  however,  supplement  in  one 
way  or  another  what  they  tell  us.  The  anecdotes 
of  Plutarch,  for  example,  give  interest  and  color  to 
the  record  of  this  as  well  as  of  a  later  time.  Livy 
wrote  in  Latin  and  Dionysius  in  Greek,  and  both 
lived  during  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Augustus, 
seven  hundred  years  after  the  legendary  founding 
of  the  city,  and  nearly  five  hundred  after  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  kings.  Neither  of  them  could,  there- 
fore, have  had  any  original  knowledge  of  events  as 
remote  as  these,  but  they  must  have  derived  their 
information  from  previous  writers  whose  works  are 
not  accessible  to  us.  These  previous  writers  of  his- 
tory are  grouped  together  under  the  general  name 
of  annalists,  and  the  earliest  of  them,  Quintus  Fa- 
bius  Pictor  and  Lucius  Cincius  Alimentus,  were 
contemporaries  of  the  second  Punic  war  (218  B.  c.). 
They  seem  to  have  written  condensed  and  colorless 
accounts  of  the  times  before  their  own,  and  then  to 
have  followed  these  with  detailed  and  full  records 
of  things  which  they  themselves  had  seen  or  of 
which  they  had  learned  from  their  fathers.  They 
afforded,  therefore,  for  the  use  of  the  later  his- 


SOURCES  OF  EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY,     n 

torians,  complete  and,  on  the  whole,  reliable  ma- 
terial, beginning  perhaps  with  the  time  of  Pyrrhus 
(280  B.  c.).  But  about  the  regal  period,  which  ended 
three  hundred  years  before  the  earliest  of  them 
wrote,  they  in  turn  could  have  had  no  original 
knowledge.  If  there  were  no  contemporary  his- 
torians for  these  first  five  hundred  years  of  the  city, 
as  seems  to  have  been  the  case,  how  did  the  annal- 
ists learn  about  what  happened  during  them  ? 

4.  The  Sources  of  the  Legendary  History 
of  Rome. — We  can  answer  this  question  by  say- 
ing that  they  must  have  relied  mainly  on  oral  tra- 
dition. For  the  regal  period  there  was  hardly  any 
other  source  of  information  open  to  them.  For  the 
next  two  centuries  there  was  enough  to  fix  the  chro- 
nology, if  they  had  the  patience  to  consult  it,  but 
the  details  must  in  any  event  have  been  supplied 
from  nothing  more  trustworthy  than  common  report, 
or  have  been  invented  by  the  historian.  To  fix 
the  chronology  certain  public  and  private  records 
were  available,  concerning  which  we  know  more 
or  less.  For  one  thing  there  were  (i)  the  Fasti. 
These  were  chronological  lists  of  the  public  magis- 
trates, and  seem  to  have  extended  as  far  back  as 
the  beginning  of  the  republic.  Second,  there  were 
(2)  certain  inscriptions  on  brass  or  stone,  preserv- 
ing treaties  or  laws.  Third,  (3)  in  some  books  of 
ancient  religious  or  civil  procedure,  material  for 
history  could  incidentally  be  found.  Fourth,  there 
were  the  (4)  Annales  Maximi,  which  were  brief 
records  made  annually  by  the  pontifex  maximus, 
who  in  this  way  kept  alive  the  memory  of  things 


12  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION'. 

which  seemed  to  him  important,  such  as  plagues, 
eclipses,  and  other  phenomena  of  nature,  the  price 
of  grain,  and  the  like.  Those  covering  the  years 
previous  to  390  B.  c.,  however,  appear  to  have  per- 
ished in  the  burning  of  the  city  by  the  Gauls. 
Finally,  noble  families,  whose  members  had  done 
great  things  in  the  state,  had  memoranda  of  these 
achievements  in  their  possession.  Under  the  images 
of  their  ancestors,  which  hung  in  the  atria  of  their 
houses,  were  brief  biographical  inscriptions,  and 
somewhere  perhaps  in  the  third  century  before 
Christ,  it  became  the  custom  to  commit  to  writing, 
for  the  guidance  of  future  orators,  at  least  an  out- 
line of  the  funeral  eulogies  which  were  delivered 
over  the  noble  dead.  When  we  have  enumerated 
these,  we  have  told  of  practically  all  the  written 
material  which  Fabius  Pictor  and  his  successors  had 
at  their  command  for  the  composition  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  times  before  their  own.  If  we  can  con- 
ceive of  them  as  exercising  the  care  and  diligence 
of  a  modern  historian  in  their  work,  they  could  not 
have  extracted  from  all  these  sources  more  than  a 
thin  thread  of  events,  running  back  with  diminish- 
ing strength  to  the  beginning  of  the  republic  and 
stopping  there.  This  shows  that  what  they  and 
those  who  draw  from  them  give  us  need  not  detain 
us  long. 

5.  Etiological  Myths.— But  modern  criticism 
goes  still  further  than  this,  and  undertakes  to  point 
out  the  origin  of  these  impossible,  contradictory, 
and  unauthenticated  stories.  It  suggests  how 
many  of  them  may  have  come  into  existence; 


SOURCES  OF  EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY.     13 

and,  even  if  we  refuse  to  allow  the  validity  of 
its  conjectures  in  a  single  instance,  we  shall  at 
any  rate  see,  from  still  another  point  of  view,  how 
uncertain  and  assailable  is  the  material  which  we 
are  considering.  There  is  a  tendency,  then,  to  re- 
gard the  forms  of  these  legends  which  we  have,  as 
survivals  from  various  versions  which  were  current 
among  the  Romans  themselves,  and  which  origi- 
nated in  some  one  of  several  ways.  One  class  is 
taken  to  be  etiological  (cf.  atria,  "  a  cause  ")  in  its 
character.  That  is,  it  is  made  up  of  legends  in- 
vented in  historical  times  to  give  the  cause  of  ex- 
isting facts  or  customs.  The  story  of  the  rape  of 
the  Sabine  women  is  an  example.  In  historical 
times  the  Romans  were  curious  to  find  an  explana- 
tion for  a  certain  part  of  the  marriage  ceremony 
(confarreatio)  which  they  had  inherited  from  their 
ancestors.  There  were  other  forms  of  the  marriage 
ceremony  common  among  them  at  this  time,  but  in 
this,  which  was  the  oldest,  and  savored  of  antiqui- 
ty, the  groom  tore  the  bride  from  the  arms  of  her 
family  as  though  by  force.  What  was  the  origin  of 
this  custom?  they  asked.  In  answer  to  this  some 
suggested  one  reason  and  others  another.  Finally, 
the  tale  was  invented  that,  when  Romulus  was  king, 
there  were  but  few  women  at  Rome,  and  that,  to 
supply  themselves  with  wives,  his  subjects  stole  the 
wives  and  daughters  of  their  neighbors.  Now,  in 
point  of  fact,  it  surely  was  not  in  memory  of  this 
that  the  show  of  violence  was  employed  in  the 
confarreatio.  If  there  is  any  explanation  to  be 
found  for  it,  it  will  not  be  in  any  incident  of 


14  ROMAN   CONSTITUTION. 

Roman  history.  This  would  be  utterly  unsatisfac- 
tory, because  this  form  of  ceremony  is  the  property, 
not  of  the  Romans  alone,  but  of  many  primitive  peo- 
ples. When  once  advanced,  however,  the  story,  be- 
cause it  seemed  plausible,  was  repeated  by  many,  at 
first  only  as  probable,  but  in  the  end  it  took  on  the 
dignity  of  history,  and  as  such  has  come  down  to  us. 
6.  The  Teachings  of  Euhemerus.  —  An- 
other large  section  of  these  legends  is  taken  to 
owe  its  origin  to  the  influence  of  what  is  known 
as  euhemerism.  Euhemerus  was  a  Sicilian  Greek, 
who  wrote  a  book  about  the  nature  of  the  gods. 
He  taught  that  the  gods  were  only  men,  dei- 
fied by  the  imagination  of  their  worshipers,  and 
that  all  the  stories  current  about  their  exploits  in 
heaven  were  in  reality  the  records  of  men's  deeds 
on  earth,  transferred  by  superstition  to  the  upper 
world.  Jupiter,  for  instance,  he  said,  had  in  point 
of  fact  been  a  king  in  Crete,  and  during  his  life  as 
a  man  he  had  done  the  things  which  were  told  and 
believed  about  him  as  a  god.  This  crude  form  of 
skepticism  had,  of  course,  suggested  itself  to  the 
minds  of  a  good  many  people  before  Euhemerus 
put  it  in  literary  shape,  and  it  takes  its  name  from 
him  only  because  he  was  so  able  an  advocate  of  it. 
A  like  way  of  thinking  had  been  popular  at  Rome, 
from  how  early  time  we  do  not  know.  Men  groping 
in  the  dark,  without  any  explanation  available  to 
tell  them  the  source  of  the  myths  they  were  taught  to 
believe,  naturally  noticed  the  resemblance  between 
the  achievements  of  their  gods  and  those  which 
would  be  performed  by  men,  and  came  in  the  end 


SOURCES  OF  EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY.     15 

to  ask,  Were  they  not  really  human  like  ourselves, 
and  are  we  not  mistaken  in  regarding  them  as  any- 
thing else  ?  There  has  been  some  tendency,  in 
modern  times,  to  regard  myths  in  this  style,  as  a 
kind  of  distorted  history,  but  it  has  not  met  with 
any  great  favor.  In  Rome,  however,  the  effect  of 
the  notion  was  to  humanize  permanently  many 
common  tales  which  had  been  told  of  the  gods 
and  really  belonged  to  mythology,  and  to  introduce 
them  into  history  as  the  exploits  of  men.  Thus, 
for  instance,  it  is  guessed  that  some  parts  of  the 
Romulus-and-Remus  story  may  have  come  into 
existence.  At  first,  they  were  twin  gods,  the  Lares 
of  the  city.  Then  they  were  debased  in  the  general 
view  into  men,  and  as  such  were  regarded  as  the 
founders  of  the  state. 

7.  The  Contribution  of  Deliberate  Inven- 
tion.— Finally,  a  great  many  of  these  legends  seem 
to  have  been  deliberate  inventions,  made  at  a  later 
time,  by  Greeks  or  others,  who  were  familiar  with 
the  stories  of  Greek  history.  It  is  easy  to  see  in- 
stances of  this  where  they  really  do  not  exist.  A 
vein  of  similar  myth  runs  through  the  legendary 
period  of  most  nations'  records,  and  it  is  only  a  very 
superficial  sort  of  criticism  which  regards  this  as  an 
evidence  that  they  have  borrowed  from  one  an- 
other. But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  can  give  one  or 
two  examples  which  are  illustrative  and  also  quite 
beyond  question.  Take  the  story  of  the  capture  of 
Gabii  by  the  Romans  under  Tarquinius  Superbus. 
It  says  that  when  the  king  sought  to  reduce  the 
city  of  Gabii  by  force  of  arms,  he  could  not,  and 


16  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

so  had  to  resort  to  stratagem.  His  son  Sextus, 
covered  with  wounds  and  gore,  went  to  the  town, 
as  though  fleeing  from  the  Romans,  and  induced 
the  Gabians  to  give  him  protection  and  shelter. 
When  he  had  established  himself  in  their  confi- 
dence, he  secretly  sent  a  messenger  to  his  father, 
asking  for  instructions  as  to  how  he  should  proceed 
in  order  to  take  the  city.  Tarquinius  sent  no  an- 
swer in  words,  but,  walking  through  his  garden, 
struck  off  with  a  stick  the  tallest  poppies  which 
were  growing  there.  When  the  messenger  reported 
this  to  Sextus,  he  understood  its  meaning,  and,  by 
bringing  false  accusations  against  the  chief  men  of 
Gabii,  had  them  put  to  death.  Finally,  when  the 
city  was  weakened  by  their  loss,  he  surrendered  it 
to  the  king.  Such  a  story  is  clearly  neither  im- 
possible nor  involved  in  destructive  obscurities  and 
contradictions.  Further  than  this,  it  is  of  a  texture 
so  simple  that  it  might  have  been  preserved  for  a 
hundred  years  or  more  without  the  help  of  writ- 
ten records.  It  is,  in  this  way,  quite  impregnable 
against  assault  from  any  of  these  quarters.  There 
is  nothing  to  suggest  that  it  was  invented  to  explain 
any  existing  fact  or  custom,  and  it  belongs  to  a 
period  much  later  than  that  with  reference  to  which 
the  theory  of  Euhemerus  was  applied.  If,  how- 
ever, we  turn  to  the  pages  of  the  Greek  writer 
Herodotus,  we  shall  find,  in  spite  of  all  this,  that 
the  only  things  that  have  to  do  with  Roman  history 
in  the  story  are  the  names  of  the  characters.  The 
stratagem  of  Sextus  and  his  father  is  there  told  in 
full  detail  with  regard  to  Cyrus  the  Great  and  his 


SOURCES  OF  EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY.     17 

capture  of  Babylon,  while  the  incident  of  the  poppy- 
heads  belongs  to  the  life  of  Periander,  the  tyrant  of 
Corinth.  In  the  Roman  legend  these  two  entirely 
unrelated  anecdotes  were  somehow  fastened  to- 
gether. In  this  form  they  were  deliberately  trans- 
planted with  slight  variations  from  their  original 
connection,  and  incorporated  by  repetition  in  Ro- 
man history,  where  we  find  them. 

8.  Can  we  know  anything",  then,  about 
Early  Roman  History  ? — If  the  material  thus  ac- 
cumulated have  any  value,  it  suggests  how  futile  it  is 
to  try  to  thread  one's  way  through  the  mazes  of  the 
city's  early  history  with  no  other  guidance  than  that 
afforded  by  the  ancient  writers.  Under  the  most 
and  least  favorable  view  alike,  they  can  secure  for 
us  something,  but  at  any  rate  for  the  period  prior  to 
the  third  century  it  is  only  the  merest  framework. 
Oral  tradition  alone  is  competent  proof  for  the  fact 
that  there  were  once  kings  at  Rome,  but  if  we  seek 
for  details  it  must  be  from  other  sources.  Now,  it 
is  nothing  better  than  a  prejudice  which  estimates 
the  testimony  of  words,  spoken  or  written,  as  the 
highest  and  most  trustworthy  kind  of  evidence. 
Men's  recollections  of  what  they  have  seen  and 
done  are  quickly  dimmed  by  time,  and  even  in  so 
far  as  they  are  retained,  are  distorted  or  colored  by 
the  medium  through  which  they  view  them.  The 
same  scenes  present  a  hundred  different  aspects  to 
a  hundred  different  observers,  because  their  edu- 
cation or  their  instincts  lead  them  to  attach  un- 
equal importance  to  the  points  in  which  they  feel 
interest.  And,  again,  how  many  can  present  to 


i8  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

another  with  any  accuracy  the  picture  which  they 
see  clearly  themselves  ?  Will  not  diffidence  or 
too  much  zeal,  carelessness  or  incapacity,  sug- 
gest the  use  of  words  which  make  the  meaning 
very  remote  from  the  one  it  was  intended  to  con- 
vey ?  The  evidence  of  eye-witnesses,  therefore,  is 
in  any  case  only  one  sort  among  many  which  the 
careful  seeker  after  truth  relies  on,  and  while  its 
loss  is  a  serious  disadvantage,  it  never  leaves  him 
without  resources.  If  one,  for  example,  could 
know  at  about  what  time  the  Cloaca  Maxima 
("  the  big  sewer")  was  built  at  Rome,  he  could 
get,  in  this  way,  as  valuable  information  concerning 
contemporary  civilization  as  a  volume  of  descrip- 
tive essays  would  give  him.  Now,  are  there  any 
such  sources  of  knowledge  for  the  period  under 
discussion,  and  can  we  learn  anything  from  them  ? 
To  this  it  may  be  answered  that  there  are  some, 
but  that  they  tell  us  nothing  about  men  and  battles. 
There  have  been  many  attempts  in  recent  years  to 
construct  anew  the  history  of  the  kings,  winnowing 
the  true  from  the  false,  but,  in  spite  of  their  clever- 
ness and  their  interest,  they  have  been  quite  abor- 
tive. We  can  never  hope  to  know  of  early  Rome  in 
the  same  personal  way  as  we  do  of  a  modern  nation. 
But  about  the  city's  life  and  the  growth  of  its  insti- 
tutions we  can  get  a  good  deal  from  one  quarter 
and  another  to  supplement  and  correct  that  given 
us  by  the  ancients.  With  the  help  of  this  we  can 
learn  no  little  concerning  very  important  things  of 
even  the  earliest  times. 

9.  How  the  Science  of  Language  helps 


SOURCES  OF  EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY.     19 

US.  —  Modern  research,  which  has  developed  the 
science  of  language,  has  supplied  us  with  some 
testimony  which  is  very  valuable  for  some  pur- 
poses, and  worth  at  least  something  for  others. 
We  can  not  here  explain  how  it  teaches  us  about 
the  prehistoric  relations  of  the  Romans  to  the  other 
members  of  the  Indo-European  family,  which  be- 
longs rather  to  the  department  of  language  than  to 
that  of  history,  but  we  can  take  an  example  or  two 
of  its  suggestiveness  in  matters  of  a  somewhat  later 
time.  If,  for  instance,  we  should  discover  in  the 
Samnites'  country  tablets  of  stone  inscribed  with 
words  in  the  Samnite  tongue,  andr  on  examination, 
we  should  find  that  these  bore  a  very  close  resem- 
blance in  root  and  method  of  inflection  to  Latin 
words,  we  might  infer  that  the  Samnites  and  the  Lat- 
ins were  of  the  same  race.  This,  to  be  sure,  would  be 
by  no  means  certain,  because  language  is  not  always 
an  indication  of  race.  We  ourselves  see  proofs  of 
this  every  day,  and  in  history  we  easily  remember 
that  the  conquering  Normans  took  the  tongue  of 
the  English,  and  the  conquered  Gauls  that  pf  the 
Romans.  But,  nevertheless,  we  should  get  here  at 
least  a  hint,  to  be  confirmed  or  rejected  by  the  con- 
tributions of  other  sources.  Another  example,  how- 
ever, will  show  that  such  evidence,  even  in  its  un- 
supported shape,  will  sometimes  be  very  convincing. 
If  one  were  writing  a  history  of  Roman  commerce, 
he  would  search  in  vain  through  Livy  and  Dio- 
nysius  for  information  about  its  direction  in  early 
times.  Did  the  early  Romans  trade  with  the  Greeks 

or  with  the  Spaniards,  with  the  Gauls  or  with  the 
a 


20  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

Egyptians  ?  There  are  a  good  many  things,  of  course, 
which  would  assist  in  framing  an  answer  to  this 
question,  but  no  one  of  them  is  more  valuable  than 
what  is  suggested  by  the  presence,  in  the  Latin  lan- 
guage and  in  the  Greek  of  Sicily  and  Campania,  of 
many  words,  mutually  borrowed,  which  signify  the 
commodities  and  instruments  of  commerce.  If  the 
Romans  incorporated  in  their  language  the  forms 
of  Greek  words,  which  were  employed  in  the  Doric 
section  of  Magna  Graecia,  and  borrowed  nothing 
from  the  Achaean  cities;  and  if,  at  the  same  time, 
the  Achaean  dialects  bear  no  traces  of  contact  with 
the  Latin,  while  the  Sicilian  Greek  had  many  terms 
such  as  the  Romans  used  for  the  purposes  of  trade, 
we  have  here  testimony  of  the  highest  order  for  the 
subject  under  consideration.  This  will  prove,  per- 
haps better  than  anything  else  could,  that  the  Ro- 
mans knew  the  Dorian  Greeks  who  lived  in  Italy 
and  met  them  in  commerce,  at  this  early  time,  at 
least  more  closely  than  they  did  the  other  races 
which  surrounded  them. 

10.  Etymological  Evidence. — Or  let  us  take 
a  single  word,  and  see  what  its  etymology  teaches 
about  social  usages  with  which,  at  first  glance,  it 
has  no  connection.  In  the  view  of  Roman  law, 
property  was  divisible  into  res  mancipi  and  res  nee 
mancipi^  or  into  things  the  sale  of  which  had  to  be 
accompanied  by  a  certain  prescribed  ceremony  in 
order  to  insure  its  validity,  and  those  which  passed 
freely  without  any  such  ceremony.  In  historical 
times,  even  if  the  owner  agreed  to  sell  and  the  pur- 
chaser paid  the  price  demanded,  such  things  as 


SOURCES  OF  EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY.     21 

land,  buildings,  slaves,  horses,  and  cattle  could  not 
be  acquired  unless  the  sale  was  made  in  the  pres- 
ence of  five  witnesses,  and  with  the  minute  ob- 
servance of  a  series  of  formalities  which  we  need 
not  describe,  but  which  were  included  in  late  Latin 
under  the  name  mancipatio.  The  reason  why  the 
transfer  of  these  was  fenced  in  in  this  way,  while 
the  ordinary  commodities  of  every-day  life  were 
bought  and  sold  as  they  are  with  us,  was  that,  at  the 
time  when  this  custom  came  into  existence,  such 
things  were  esteemed  more  highly  in  the  popular 
view.  In  the  same  manner,  in  English  law,  land 
which  got  undue  importance  as  a  species  of  property 
from  the  feudal  system,  could  not  be  disposed  of 
without  a  great  deal  more  ceremony  than  was  re- 
quired in  the  case  of  personalty.  The  name  manci- 
pium,  or  mancipatio  (manus^  "the  hand,"  and  capio, 
"  to  take,"),  applied  to  the  transaction,  proves  that  its 
most  characteristic  feature  was  displayed  when  the 
buyer  grasped  with  his  hand,  before  the  witnesses, 
the  property,  which  thus  became  his.  Such  a  per- 
formance was  very  appropriate  to  give  publicity  to 
the  sale  of  a  slave  or  a  horse  or  a  cow,  but  it 
clearly  had  no  reference,  at  the  beginning,  to  land, 
for  this,  of  course,  could  not  be  the  subject  of 
manual  delivery.  The  inference,  then,  is  that  land 
and  buildings  were  not  originally  res  mancipi,  and 
that  the  ceremony  with  which  they  afterward  were 
transferred  was,  in  the  first  instance,  employed  orfly 
in  the  case  of  the  other  things  included  under  this 
name.  Now,  it  is  quite  impossible  that  the  sale 
of  land  and  buildings  was  ever  a  matter  of  less 


22  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

formality  than  that  of  the  other  res  manctpt,  and 
that  restrictions  grew  up  around  it  in  the  course  of 
time.  The  whole  history  of  Roman  law  forbids  this 
theory,  because  it  is  a  history  of  the  removal  of 
formalities,  not  of  their  imposition.  And,  in  any 
event,  land  and  buildings  must  always  have  stood 
as  high  in  popular  esteem  as  slaves  and  cattle.  On 
the  contrary,  what  all  this  means  is  that  land  and 
buildings  were  once  not  bought  and  sold  at  all  at 
Rome,  and  that,  when  they  began  to  be,  they  were 
classed  along  with  these  other  things,  whose  impor- 
tance was  indicated  by  the  formalities  which  accom- 
panied their  alienation.  The  etymology  of  a  single 
word,  in  this  way,  informs  us  that  there  was  a  time 
when  the  Romans  held  their  real  estate  in  common, 
or  when,  if  they  held  it  in  severalty,  they  had  no 
right  to  part  with  this  ownership. 

ii.  The  Contribution  of  Comparative 
Law. — We  learn  this  fact,  however,  from  still  an- 
other source  which  is  available,  in  general,  for  in- 
formation about  nations  which  had  attained  to  con- 
siderable civilization  before  their  history  began. 
The  study  of  the  political  and  social  institutions  of 
a  great  many  people  has  made  it  quite  clear  that 
they  all  tend  to  pass  through  the  same  stages  of  de- 
velopment from  the  simplest  barbarism  up  to  the 
high  complexity  of  civilization.  This  belief  has 
been  arrived  at  after  the  examination  of  the  life  of 
many  barbarous  tribes,  of  the  remains  of  ancient 
empires,  and  of  the  customs,  both  living  and  obso- 
lete, of  the  nations  of  to-day.  The  science  is  still  in 
its  infancy,  and  has  thus  far  been  concerned  chiefly 


SOURCES  OF  EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY.     23 

with  the  accumulation  of  facts  which  have  yet  to 
be  arranged  and  compared.  The  results  of  this 
work  promise  to  be  of  the  utmost  value.  We  have 
in  the  case  of  no  people  complete  records  from  the 
beginning,  and  even  those  which  run  back  to  the 
most  remote  period  present  gaps  where  we  should, 
perhaps,  least  of  all  be  willing  to  have  them.  But 
according  to  this  view,  if  we  spread  out  in  tabular 
form  the  steps  in  the  growth  of  all  the  nations  in 
the  world  of  which  we  have  any  knowledge,  and 
place  them  side  by  side,  we  can  supply  from  one 
that  which  may  be  lacking  in  another.  We  shall 
show,  in  another  connection,  that,  when  Roman 
history  begins,  individuals  did  own  real  estate  in 
the  city,  but  under  certain  restrictions,  which 
hinted  that  this  had  not  always  been  so.  Now,  we 
know  something  about  some  countries,  where  all  the 
land  belongs  to  the  community  and  the  individual 
owns  his  share  of  the  products  of  the  soil  only,  and 
not  the  soil  itself.  There  are  others  where  a  tran- 
sition is  making  from  this  system  to  such  a  one  as 
is  common  nowadays.  The  restrictions  which  at- 
tended land-holding  at  Rome  at  the  dawn  of  his- 
tory bear  traces  of  both  of  these  sorts  of  tenure — 
of  the  first  in  some  degree,  and  of  the  second  very 
conspicuously.  We  thus  have  a  gleam  of  light  from 
an  earlier  time  to  direct  our  investigations,  and  we 
can  borrow  from  the  records  of  other  nations  the 
preliminary  stages  which  we  can  not  find  in  its  own, 
and  construct  with  accuracy  a  history  of  land-hold- 
ing at  Rome  from  the  earliest  to  the  latest  date. 
Civilizations  as  remote  from  each  other  as  those  of 


24  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

England  and  Java,  of  Germany  and  Russia  and 
India,  contribute  to  this  object.  These  all  present 
the  phenomenon  of  a  primitive  communal  owner- 
ship of  land,  ending  or  tending  to  end  in  approxi- 
mately the  same  form  which  was  in  vogue  at  Rome 
when  we  first  hear  anything  about  her.  The  in- 
ference is,  therefore,  if  we  treat  the  nations  of  the 
world  as  a  whole,  that  here,  too,  this  system  had 
just  reached  its  conclusion. 

12.  Inferences  from  the  Later  History  of 
the  City. — Finally,  the  institutions  of  the  city  in  a 
later  time,  when  we  have  tolerably  complete  informa- 
tion about  them,  present  many  facts  which  are  sug- 
gestive of  their  previous  history.  Obsolete  cus- 
toms, and  officials  endowed  with  great  nominal 
powers  but  no  real  ones,  pointed  to  a  time  when 
the  customs  had  a  meaning  and  the  magistracy's 
functions  were  not  formalities,  but  essential  to  the 
state's  political  machinery.  We  can  learn  in  this 
way,  for  example,  about  the  sphere  and  the  duties 
of  the  king.  There  were  no  kings  at  Rome  in  his- 
torical times,  but  there  were  the  so-called  curule 
magistrates  who  filled  the  king's  place.  Their  powers 
were  not  in  detail  the  same  as  his,  because,  of  course, 
the  growth  of  the  city  had  given  birth  to  new  avenues 
for  governmental  activity,  but  in  a  broad  way  there 
was  a  correspondence.  The  king's  imperium,  we 
know  from  a  trustworthy  tradition,  was  bestowed 
on  him  by  a  law  enacted  in  the  comitia  curiata,  the 
people's  primitive  legislative  assembly.  The  comitia 
curiata,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  continued  to  meet 
in  historical  times,  in  a  purely  formal  way,  to  con- 


SOURCES  OF  EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY.     25 

fer  the  imperium  on  such  officers  as  were  entitled  to 
it.  The  law  which  they  passed  for  this  purpose 
was  a  necessary  preliminary,  even  under  the  repub- 
lic, to  commanding  the  army  or  exercising  judicial 
functions  of  any  kind.  So  we  infer  that  it  con- 
ferred similar  powers  on  the  king,  who  thus  is 
proved  to  have  been  general  and  judge.  Or,  again, 
as  the  presiding  officials  in  the  popular  assemblies 
of  the  republic  alone  of  those  present  there  could 
speak  in  support  of  a  measure  or  against  it,  we  infer 
that  the  king  alone  harangued  the  people  at  their 
meetings  in  regal  times,  because  the  course  of  the 
constitution's  development  had  been  to  diminish 
the  magistrates'  influence,  not  to  heighten  it.  Not 
to  pursue  this  so  far  as  to  anticipate  the  pages 
which  will  follow,  if  we  keep  in  view  this  possibility 
of  constructing  the  past  and  unknown  from  that 
which  is  later  and  historical,  we  shall  constantly  see 
places  in  the  city's  record,  as  it  is  disclosed,  which 
throw  light  on  the  obscurities  covering  the  begin- 
ning. 

13.  What  we  can  learn  from  these 
Sources. — When  we  find  fair  inferences  from  sev- 
eral such  sorts  of  evidence  as  these,  agreeing  to 
confirm  a  view  which  has  been  taken  about  any 
point  in  Roman  history,  we  are  quite  justified  in 
considering  it  established.  When  light  is  thrown 
upon  it  from  only  one  source,  it  will  be  at  the  best 
uncertain  and  a  matter  of  opinion.  The  opinions 
of  those,  however,  whose  good  judgment  has  been 
shown  from  their  treatment  of  places  where  the  evi- 
dence is  more  full,  are  worthy  of  the  most  con- 
3 


26  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

sideration  here  also,  and  may  be  taken  as  final. 
But,  after  all  has  been  collected  which  the  mute 
testimony  of  things  and  the  authority  of  modern 
scholars  afford,  the  human  side  of  early  Roman 
history  is  still  for  the  most  part  hidden  from  us. 
This  is  unfortunate,  because  it  is  both  entertaining 
and  profitable  to  study  about  great  men  and  their 
motives,  and  to  read  in  detail  the  annals  of  the 
common  people's  simple  lives.  But  our  regret  on 
this  account  may  be  tempered  here  by  the  thought 
that  the  sources  of  information  which  we  have  are 
especially  valuable  for  those  very  things  for  which 
Roman  history  ought  most  of  all  to  be  studied. 
When  we  follow  the  career  of  the  Hebrews,  in  the 
Bible,  it  is,  of  course,  important  to  stop  over  their 
wars  and  to  understand  their  system  of  government, 
but  the  great  thing  is  to  learn  about  their  ideas 
on  religion,  and  to  see  how  these  were  developed. 
For,  while  their  success  in  war  was  not  particularly 
noteworthy,  and  their  political  system  was  quite 
rudimentary  and  did  not  count  for  much  in  the 
world,  their  conception  of  God's  nature  was  so 
high  that  it  has  survived  through  the  ages,  and 
gladdens  and  directs  our  lives  to-day.  In  the 
same  manner,  it  would  make  very  little  differ- 
ence to  us  if  we  knew  nothing  about  Nikias  the 
Greek  and  the  siege  of  Syracuse,  or  about  Lysan- 
der  and  the  battle  of  ^Egospotami.  But  it  is 
quite  essential,  if  we  are  to  be  educated  men  and 
get  the  joys  which  come  from  the  things  of  the 
mind,  that  we  should  have  some  acquaintance 
with  what  Homer  and  ^Eschylus  and  Plato  wrote. 


SOURCES  OF  EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY.     27 

and  with  the  frieze  which  Phidias  made  for  the 
Parthenon.  And  this  is  because  Greek  literature 
and  Greek  art  are  immortal,  and  the  principles 
to  which  they  give  expression  are  the  ones  by 
which  we  must  be  guided  in  order  either  to  ap- 
preciate or  produce  what  is  beautiful.  Rome's 
claim  to  consideration  is  from  an  entirely  different 
stand-point.  Roman  literature,  for  instance,  is  not 
exceptionally  interesting,  or  original,  or  pleasing; 
and  some  critics  have  gone  so  far  as  to  say  that 
nothing  has  been  written  in  Latin  which  has  not 
been  better  written  in  some  other  language.  But,  in 
matters  of  statecraft  and  jurisprudence,  the  mod- 
ern world  owes  a  great  debt  to  ancient  Rome. 
She  worked  out  to  success  or  failure  most  of  the 
problems  which  present  themselves  to  the  practi- 
cal statesman  and  law-maker  of  these  days.  Her 
ideas,  therefore,  on  such  things  ought  especially  to 
be  looked  for  in  the  study  of  her  history,  and  these, 
more  readily,  perhaps,  than  anything  else,  can  be 
learned  from  the  sources  of  information  which  we 
have. 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE    STRUCTURE    OF    ANCIENT    SOCIETY. 

i.  The  Roman  Family.— When  we  begin  to 
study  Roman  history,  no  matter  what  the  period, 
we  are  soon  confronted  by  an  institution  which  is 
quite  foreign  to  anything  existing  at  the  present  day. 
This  is  the  patria  potestas,  or  the  peculiar  power 
which  a  Roman  father  had  over  the  members  of  his 
family.  In  the  last  years  of  the  empire  traces  of  it 
are  still  to  be  found,  and  at  the  outset  it  is  the  most 
conspicuous  feature  of  the  city's  social  system.  A 
man's  family,  in  this  sense,  consisted  of  all  his  de- 
scendants to  the  remotest  generations,  provided 
their  relationship  with  him  could  be  traced  through 
males.  Marriage  was  a  religious  ceremony  (con- 
farreatio),  and,  when  his  sons  took  wives,  they 
brought  them  by  means  of  it  under  his  control.  All 
their  children,  then,  to  the  farthest  limit,  were  also 
included  in  the  same  body.  His  daughters,  on  the 
other  hand,  became  free  as  to  him  by  their  marriage, 
because  they  passed  into  the  membership  of  another 
family.  The  relatives  they  thus  acquired,  and  their 
own  children,  were  counted  as  no  kin  of  their  fa- 
ther's family,  because,  in  general,  there  was  no  such 
thing  as  relationship  through  women.  Persons  thus 


STRUCTURE   OF  ANCIENT  SOCIETY.        29 

connected  were  called  cognates  (cognatt),  and  be- 
tween them  early  Roman  law  recognized  no  tie  of 
blood.  Those  who  were  related  through  males  were 
called  agnates  (agnati\  and  over  this  agnatic  family 
the  father  (pater  familias)  exercised  unlimited  sway. 
All  its  members  were  to  him  as  his  slaves  or  his  prop- 
erty, and  under  a  bondage  which  was  life-long  and 
quite  complete.  He  could  sell  or  kill  them,  and  all 
which  they  had  was  his.  There  was  no  tribunal 
before  which  he  had  to  account  for  his  use  of  this 
authority,  for  within  the  limits  of  the  family  he  was 
king  and  priest.  As  king,  he  administered  justice, 
apportioned  burdens,  and  distributed  rewards.  As 
priest,  he  offered  sacrifices  on  the  family's  behalf  at 
the  family's  altar  to  the  family's  gods.  Having 
learned  all  this,  if  we  knew  nothing  more  about  the 
structure  of  Roman  society,  we  should  say  at  any 
rate  that  it  differed  from  modern  society  in  that 
the  unit  was  not  the  individual,  as  it  is  in  our  day, 
but  this  agnatic  family. 

2.  The  Beginnings  of  Rome. — In  point  of 
fact,  however,  the  patria  potestas  and  what  followed 
from  it  were  of  the  widest  significance  in  giving 
shape  and  color  to  the  city's  political  as  well  as  to 
its  social  institutions.  We  shall  get  some  proof  of 
this  if  we  consider  the  nature  of  Rome's  primary 
political  organism,  the  clan  (getis,  cf.  root  gen,  seen 
in  gigno).  When  Roman  history  begins,  there  were 
within  the  city,  and  subordinate  to  the  common  city 
government,  a  large  number  of  smaller  bodies,  each 
of  which  preserved  its  individuality  and  some  sem- 
blance of  governmental  machinery.  These  were 


30  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION'. 

clans,  and  in  .prehistoric  times  each  of  them  is 
taken  to  have  had  an  independent  political  exist- 
ence, living  apart,  worshiping  its  own  gods,  and 
ruled  over  by  its  own  chieftain.  This  clan  organi- 
zation is  not  supposed  to  have  been  peculiar  at  all 
to  Rome,  but  ancient  society  in  general  was  com- 
posed of  an  indefinite  number  of  such  bodies,  which, 
at  the  outset,  treated  with  each  other  in  a  small  way 
as  nations  might  treat  with  each  other  to-day.  It 
needs  to  be  noted,  however,  that,  at  any  rate,  so  far 
as  Rome  is  concerned,  this  is  a  matter  of  inference, 
not  of  historical  proof.  The  earliest  political  di- 
visions in  Latium,  of  which  we  have  any  trace,  con- 
sisted of  such  clans  united  into  communities.  If 
they  ever  existed  separately,  therefore,  their  union 
must  have  been  deliberate  and  artificial,  and  the 
body  thus  formed  was  the  canton  (civitas,  or  popu- 
lus).  Each  canton  had  a  fixed  common  stronghold 
(capiiolium,  "height,"  or  arx  (cf.  arceo),  "  citadel/') 
situated  on  some  central  elevation.  The  clans  dwelt 
around  in  hamlets  (vici,  or  fagi)  scattered  through 
the  canton.  Originally,  the  central  stronghold  was 
not  a  place  of  residence  like  the  pagi,  but  a  place 
of  refuge,  whither  the  allied  clans  might  retreat  in 
case  of  danger  from  invasion,  and  a  place  of  meet- 
ing, where  they  assembled  for  a  common  religious 
worship,  for  the  holding  of  festivals  and  markets, 
and  for  the  adjustment  of  disputes.  Most  of  the 
cities  in  the  plain  of  Latium,  of  which  we  hear  in 
Roman  history,  were,  in  their  origin,  simply  the 
sites  of  canton-centers  of  this  character.  The  earli- 
est of  them  to  be  founded  were  on  the  Alban  hills, 


STRUCTURE   OF  ANCIENT  SOCIETY.        31 

whose  lofty  position  rendered  them  easy  of  forti- 
fication. Such,  too,  was  the  beginning  of  towns 
like  Lanuvium,  Aricia,  and  Tusculum.  Where  the 
Apennines  extend  out  into  the  Campagna,  towns 
like  Tibur  and  Prseneste  grew  up.  On  elevations 
near  the  coast  were  Laurentum  and  Lavinium,  and, 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Tiber,  Rome  herself  came  to 
be  a  city,  in  the  first  place,  because  she  was  adapted 
to  be  a  place  of  refuge  for  the  clans  about  her. 

3.  What  was  a  Clan  ?— In  all  of  this,  there- 
fore, the  clan  seems  to  lie  at  the  very  foundation, 
and  ought  to  be  defined.  We  shall  call  it  a  widened 
family.  This  is  only  one  of  several  possible  defini- 
tions, and  in  giving  it  here  we  do  not  vouch  at  all 
for  its  historical  correctness.  Assuming  it  for  the 
present,  however,  to  be  accurate,  all  the  members 
of  a  clan  were  related  by  blood.  Any  clan  in  the 
beginning,  of  course,  must  have  been  simply  a 
family.  When  it  grew  so  large  as  to  be  divided 
into  sections,  the  sections  were  known  as  families 
(famititz),  and  their  union  was  the  clan.  In  this 
view,  the  family,  as  we  find  it  existing  in  the  Roman 
state,  was  a  subdivision  of  the  clan.  In  other  words, 
historically,  families  did  not  unite  to  form  clans,  but 
the  clan  was  the  primitive  thing,  and  the  families  were 
its  branches.  Men  thus  recognized  kinship  of  a  dou- 
ble character.  They  were  related  to  all  the  mem- 
bers of  their  clan  as  gentiles,  and  again  more  closely 
to  all  the  members  of  their  branch  of  the  clan 
at  once  as  gentiles  and  also  as  agnati.  As  already 
stated,  men  belonged  to  the  same  family  (agnati) 
when  they  could  trace  their  descent  through  males 
4 


32  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

from  a  common  ancestor  who  gave  its  name  to  the 
family,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  was  its  eponym. 
Between  the  members  of  a  clan  the  chief  evidence 
of  relationship  in  historical  times  was  tradition. 
They  found  themselves  bearing  a  common  name 
and  having  a  common  religious  worship.  They  be- 
lieved that  they  were  descended  from  a  common 
ancestor,  but,  as  the  organization  had  existed  from 
before  the  dawn  of  history,  it  was  not  possible  for 
them  to  know  anything  certain  as  to  how  they  were 
connected  with  their  eponym.  The  primitive  social 
group,  then,  was  in  this  way  made  up  of  kinsmen^ 
governed  in  the  same  way  and  by  the  same  author- 
ity as  the  family.  From  this  up  to  the  highest  social 
group  of  ancient  society  there  was  an  orderly  de- 
velopment, shaped  and  colored  by  this  beginning, 
families  of  kinsmen  forming  clans  of  kinsmen,  and 
clans  of  kinsmen,  as  time  grew  old,  uniting  artifi- 
cially to  make  the  state. 

4.  The  Patriarchal  Theory.— We  have  thus 
outlined  what  is  known  as  the  patriarchal  theory  of 
society,  and  hinted  at  its  application  to  certain  facts 
in  Roman  history.  It  should  be  remembered,  how- 
ever, that  it  is  only  a  theory,  and  that  it  is  open  to 
some  apparent  and  to  some  real  criticism.  As 
stated  in  the  categorical  way  in  which  we  have 
given  it,  it  is  assailable  from  several  sides.  It  is 
not  possible,  of  course,  nor  desirable  to  consider  all 
of  its  weaknesses  here,  but  something  needs  to  be 
said  of  them  in  order  to  show  both  its  meaning  and 
its  limits.  One,  and  perhaps  the  least  serious,  ob- 
jection is  that  it  has  an  exact  and  artificial  form 


STRUCTURE    OF  ANCIENT  SOCIETY.        33 

which  makes  it  appear  untenable  of  men  living  in 
society.  Such  rigid  exclusions  and  inclusions  would 
be  possible  with  puppets  moved  hither  and  thither 
by  a  master-mind,  but,  where  men  are  the  factors, 
we  expect  more  latitude  and  greater  flexibility.  The 
definiteness  of  growth  from  family  into  clan,  and  then 
back  from  clan  to  families  with  all  the  subsequent 
unions  up  to  the  latest,  seems  very  unreasonable. 
This,  however,  is  more  a  fault  of  recital  than  of  fact. 
It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  in  the  statement  of 
all  social  phenomena  it  is  necessary  to  follow  a  sim- 
ple line  of  essentials,  and  that  the  imagination  of 
the  student  has  to  be  employed  to  blur  the  outlines. 
For  example,  what  is  here  given  is  of  a  typical  fam- 
ily and  clan,  to  which  it  is  not  claimed  that  any 
actual  family  or  clan  ever  corresponded  in  full  de- 
tail. Under  this  theory  strangers  were  admitted, 
in  fact,  into  families  by  various  forms  of  adoption, 
and  families  incorporated  into  clans  with  which  they 
had  no  tie  of  blood.  Consanguineous  clans  also 
were  from  time  to  time  disrupted  from  one  cause 
or  another  ;  and,  again,  clans  of  an  entirely  artificial 
character,  whose  members  came  from  anywhere, 
and  bore  no  relationship  to  each  other,  were  con- 
stantly formed  under  all  sorts  of  incentives.  Ac- 
cording to  the  theory,  however,  the  primitive  thing 
was  the  clan  of  kinsmen  divided  into  families  of 
kinsmen,  and  through  all,  this  remained  the  type 
after  which  the  others  were  modeled  by  analogy. 

5.  The  Patriarchal  Theory  (continued}.— 
But  there  are  other  weaknesses  which  are  more  real. 
For  one  thing,  the  source  of  its  fundamental  idea, 


34  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

the  patria  potestas,  is  a  mystery.  If  you  ask  an  ad- 
vocate of  the  patriarchal  theory  how  it  was  that  the 
father  had  such  extraordinary  and  undisputed  au- 
thority in  primitive  society,  he  will  answer  that  it 
is  impossible  to  tell.  But  a  system  whose  basis  is 
a  mystery  must  rest  on  strong  historical  evidence,  or 
else  confess  that  there  are  other  systems  back  of  it, 
out  of  which  it  may  have  been  developed.  Here, 
again,  are  two  other  heads  under  which  very  just 
criticism  can  be  made  on  the  theory.  It  claims  to 
be  historical  in  its  methods,  and  yet  to  tell  about 
the  beginnings  of  things.  But  history  can  not  tell 
us  about  the  beginnings  of  things,  for  things  began 
long  before  any  of  the  sources  of  history  existed. 
But,  if  this  simply  means  that  the  patriarchal  form 
of  government  is  the  earliest  of  known  forms,  then 
this  conclusion  ought  to  be  based  on  evidence  col- 
lected from  every  quarter.  In  point  of  fact,  how- 
ever, sole  reliance  for  proof  has  been  put  on  a  few 
Indo-European  and  Semitic  races  in  a  compara- 
tively advanced  stage  of  civilization.  The  vast 
mass  of  facts,  which  might  be  contributed  by  the 
rest  of  the  world,  has  not  been  drawn  on.  But, 
when  these  have  been  collated,  they  present  diffi- 
culty after  difficulty,  which  the  patriarchal  theory 
does  not  meet ;  and  yet  it  must  meet  them  if  the 
theory  is  to  stand  in  the  form  in  which  it  has  been 
advanced. 

6.  The  Application  of  these  Criticisms  to 
Roman  History. — The  weight  of  these  objections 
is  so  very  serious  as  to  have  given  rise  to  an  en- 
tirely different  course  of  speculation.  This  denies 


STRUCTURE   OF  ANCIENT  SOCIETY.        35 

that  the  family  form  of  society  was  primitive,  and 
that  the  clan  was  based  on  kinship.  It  holds  that 
society  began  as  a  promiscuous  horde,  in  which 
marriage  was  not  recognized,  and  that,  when  it 
emerged  from  this,  it  was  in  the  form  of  a  tribe. 
Clans  were,  in  this  view,  subdivisions  of  the  tribe, 
made  on  some  principle  not  very  clear.  As  a  the- 
ory of  social  development,  all  this  is  as  yet  quite 
unformed,  but  for  purposes  of  destructive  criticism 
it  has  great  value.  Because  of  it  we  are  not  justi- 
fied in  labeling  any  of  the  known  social  organisms 
as  primitive  to  the  exclusion  of  the- others,  nor  can 
we  hold  it  proved  that  the  original  clan  was  in  fact 
consanguineous.  But  this  is  not  necessary  for  the 
purposes  of  Roman  constitutional  history.  It  is 
enough  that  the  members  of  a  Roman  clan  always 
thought  of  themselves  as  thus  related,  and  that  this 
belief  was  always  with  them  strong  enough  to  shape 
their  actions.  Its  historical  truth  is  a  matter  of 
no  moment.  The  influence  of  their  belief  on  the 
development  of  their  institutions  was  as  great  as 
the  influence  of  the  fact  would  have  been.  In  this 
sense,  and  with-  these  limitations,  it  may  be  granted 
that  the  patriarchal  theory  was  true  of  the  Romans. 
This  brings  us  back  again  to  the  statement  of 
Rome's  origin  as  a  canton-center  in  the  plain  of 
Latium. 

7.  The  Early  Roman  Religion. —  In  order 
to  understand  the  social  and  political  life  of  the 
men  who  lived  in  this  community,  we  have  to  know 
something  about  their  notions  on  several  other 
matters.  It  is  important,  as  we  shall  see,  to  know 


36  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

that  they  believed  in  the  existence  of  spirits,  and 
that  they  made  some  of  them  the  objects  of  wor- 
ship. This  belief  seems  to  be  shared  by  all  people 
in  the  primitive  stages  of  civilization.  That  is,  all 
known  religions,  in  spite  of  their  great  and  many 
differences,  have  this  conception  in  common.  It 
must,  therefore,  belong  to  a  very  early  stage  in  their 
development,  because  we  find  it  the  property  of 
races  which  are  very  low  in  the  intellectual  scale. 
The  Greeks  and  the  Romans  thus,  before  they 
parted  from  each  other  in  prehistoric  times,  be- 
lieved that  the  world  was  peopled  by  beings  other 
than  those  which  we  can  see  or  feel.  These  beings 
in  this  primitive  view  appear  not  to  have  been  ab- 
stractions, but  to  have  been  the  doubles  of  things 
which  could  be  seen  or  felt.  Physical  things, 
whether  living  or  lifeless,  had  ghostly  counterparts 
which  dwelt  in  them  or  about  them.  Thus  there 
would  be  a  spirit  corresponding  to  the  sky  which 
one  could  see,  and  another  corresponding  to  the 
person  of  the  man  with  whom  one  talked  and  lived. 
These  ghostly  counterparts  were  at  first  always 
thought  of  in  connection  with  the  things  to  which 
they  belonged.  Before  the  beginning  of  Rome's 
separate  history,  however,  some  of  them  had  been 
divorced  from  the  objects  to  which  they  had  origi- 
nally been  attached,  and  personified  or  anthro- 
pomorphized. This  was  the  case  with  the  spirits  of 
some  of  the  more  conspicuous  objects  of  nature, 
like  the  firmament,  the  spirit  of  which  was  thus 
made  into  the  god  Jupiter  of  the  Romans,  or  Zeus 
pater  of  the  Greeks.  In  the  same  way  the  spirit 


STRUCTURE   OF  ANCIENT  SOCIETY.        37 

corresponding  to  the  hearth-fire  became  the  god- 
dess Vesta  of  the  Romans  and  Hestia  of  the  Greeks. 
This  separation  and  personification  of  the  spirits, 
however,  had  not  been  carried  very  far  at  this  date, 
as  the  small  number  of  cognate  words  found  in 
the  two  languages  among  the  names  of  divinities 
shows. 

8.  The  Early  Roman  Religion  (continued}. — 
Now,  the  Roman  religion  itself  from  the  time  of  its 
independent  existence  continued  to  develop  along 
these  two  lines.  On  the  one  hand,  it  carried  out 
this  idea  of  the  existence  of  ghosts  or  doubles  with  a 
completeness  and  consistency  which  never  flinched. 
On  the  other,  the  spirits  of  specific  objects  were 
every  now  and  then  detached  from  their  special 
connection  and  entered  into  the  body  of  general 
deities.  But  it  is  with  the  first  of  these  methods  of 
god-making  alone  that  we  are  at  present  concerned, 
because  the  significance  of  the  second  belongs  to  a 
later  period  of  the  city's  history.  In  the  primitive 
Roman  conception,  then,  every  thing,  every  place, 
every  act,  every  thought,  had  a  spiritual  counter- 
part which  ruled  and  directed  it,  but  which  in  re- 
spect to  other  objects  was  quite  powerless.  The 
world  of  ghosts  or  doubles  was  as  populous  as  the 
real  world  was  full  of  things  which  could  be  seen 
or  conceived.  Nobody  could  say  how  many  divini- 
ties of  this  sort  there  were,  because  their  number 
was  of  course  limitless.  For  example,  sixty  or  more 
gods  are  enumerated  which  had  to  do  with  the 
growth  of  the  human  body,  like  "  Vagitanus,  who 
opened  the  mouth  of  the  infant  for  his  first  cry  ; 


38  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

Cunina,  who  guarded  the  cradle  ;  Educa,  who  taught 
the  infant  to  eat ;  Potlna^  who  taught  him  to  drink  ; 
Ossipago,  who  knit  the  bones.  For  husbandry  there 
were  gods  like  Nodutus,  who  caused  the  joints  of 
the  stalks  to  grow  ;  Volutina,  who  wrapped  them  in 
their  leaf- sheaths  ;  Patelina,  who  opened  the  wrap- 
pings that  the  ear  might  come  out  in  due  season ; 
Hostilina,  who  made  the  crop  even  in  its  ears  ;  down 
to  Runcina,  who  presided  over  the  pulling  of  the 
roots  from  the  ground."  Deities  of  this  nature, 
bearing  names  the  etymology  of  which  was  so  obvi- 
ous, were  of  course  strictly  limited  in  their  sphere 
of  action.  No  one  would  think  of  calling  on  the 
divinity  Terminus  ("the  boundary")  for  help  in 
the  acquisition  of  wealth,  or  of  thanking  the  god 
Febris  ("  fever ")  because  he  had  survived  the 
dangers  of  a  sea-voyage.  For  each  such  thing  its 
appropriate  spirit  either  already  existed,  or  was 
invented  as  the  need  arose.  When  Hannibal,  for 
instance,  marching  on  the  city,  repented  of  his 
purpose  and  turned  away,  the  Romans  built  a 
temple  in  honor  of  Deus  Rediculus  ("  the  god  who 
had  caused  the  departure  ").  Or,  again,  when,  about 
250  B.  c.,  silver  was  introduced  into  the  Roman 
coinage,  ALsculanus,  the  ancient  spirit  of  copper 
money,  was  at  once  taken  to  have  begotten  a  son, 
Argentinus.  It  all  seems  like  a  sort  of  ghostly 
mockery  of  mortal  things  —  as  though  shadows 
danced  in  imitation  of  all  that  men  could  think  or 
do. 

9.  The  Early  Romans*  Ideas  about  the 
Dead. — The   mental   attitude,  thus   described,   is 


STRUCTURE   OF  ANCIENT  SOCIETY.        39 

certainly  very  remarkable,  and  immediately  invites 
inquiry  as  to  its  origin.  If  there  is  any  explanation 
forthcoming,  it  will  have  to  be  one  which  will  ac- 
count also  for  their  notions  about  the  doubles,  or 
genii,  of  men.  These  were  fully  as  strange  as  their 
other  conceptions  which  we  have  discussed,  and  are 
clearly  parts  of  the  same  way  of  thinking.  They 
believed  that  the  souls  of  men  did  not  die  with 
their  bodies,  but  that  they  survived  after  the  death 
of  the  men  to  whom  they  were  attached.  They 
did  not  conceive  of  them,  in  the  beginning,  as  in- 
habiting in  a  company  some  common  spirit-land, 
but  as  hovering  in  isolation  about  the  tomb  where 
the  lifeless  body  was  interred.  If  the  body  were 
not  interred,  neither  would  the  soul  have  a  resting- 
place,  but  would  wander  as  an  evil  spirit  over  the 
earth — unhappy,  and  making  others  so.  Moreover, 
burial  of  the  body  was  not  in  itself  sufficient,  but 
it  needed,  in  addition,  care  and  attention  from  the 
living.  This  care  and  attention  were  to  be  shown 
by  giving  to  it,  near  the  tomb  at  regular  intervals, 
offerings  of  food  and  of  drink.  These  it  was 
thought  of  at  first  as  requiring  after  death  as  much 
as  it  had  required  them  when  living.  If  it  was 
honored  in  this  sjmple  way,  its  soul  or  genius  be- 
came a  propitious  deity,  and  assisted  those  who 
cared  for  it.  If  for  any  reason,  however,  these  of- 
ferings were  ever  interrupted,  the  soul  at  once  be- 
came as  that  of  the  unburied — unhappy,  and  mak- 
ing others  so.  Men,  therefore,  sought  to  leave 
behind  them,  when  their  life  ended,  those  who 
would  continue  these  gifts  of  food  and  drink,  which 


40  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

were  to  insure  their  eternal  happiness.  And  in 
like  manner,  as  long  as  they  lived,  they  sacrificed 
to  their  ancestors  who  were  dead,  and  prayed  them 
to  be  kind,  and  aid  them  with  their  ghostly  power 
in  return  for  this  service. 

10.  The  Influence  of  these  Beliefs  within 
the  Family. — This  custom  of  worshiping  the  dead 
ancestors  has  been  advanced  by  some  as  an  ex- 
planation of  the  origin  of  the  patria  potestas.  The 
selection  of  the  dead  father,  however,  in  this  way, 
as  the  object  of  particular  worship,  would  seem  to 
be  the  result  of  his  power  when  alive  rather  than 
the  cause  of  it.  But,  when  once  established  in  the 
popular  mind  as  true,  this  religious  incentive  must 
have  co-operated  powerfully  with  every  other  mo- 
tive in  maintaining  the  peculiar  form  of  the  Roman 
family.  All  a  man's  descendants  were  thus  linked 
together,  not,  as  they  are  in  modern  times,  by  a 
feeble  chain  of  instinctive  affection,  but  as  a  close 
corporation  for  a  religious  purpose  of  the  utmost 
importance.  The  father's  control,  whatever  its 
origin,  was  re-enforced  by  his  sacred  character  as 
chief  priest  to  offer  sacrifices  with  the  co-operation 
of  his  children.  In  the  same  way  additional  sanc- 
tion was  given  to  the  system  of  reckoning  relation- 
ship through  males  only.  Marriage  was  a  religious 
ceremony,  because  it  admitted  a  stranger  into  par- 
ticipation in  the  family  sacrifices.  Henceforth  the 
wife's  duty  was  at  the  altar  of  her  husband.  Those, 
therefore,  who  were  born  from  her  had  no  her- 
itable connection  with  her  father's  family,  because 
they  could  not  be  called  on  to  perform  the  sac- 


STRUCTURE   OF  ANCIENT  SOCIETY.        41 

rifices  to  its  dead,  nor  did  they  share  in  their 
ghostly  favor.  The  family  property,  the  fund  out 
of  which  the  offerings  were  made,  could  not  pass 
to  them  any  more  than  to  any  other  strangers. 
Kinship  was,  then,  based  on  a  religious  motive, 
and  its  evidence  was  not  blood  but  a  common 
worship. 

IT.  The  Influence  of  these  Beliefs  with- 
out the  Family. — Now,  the  clan,  the  primary  po- 
litical organism  in  the  view  we  have  elaborated,  has 
been  defined  as  a  widened  family,  and,  like  the  nar- 
rower family,  acknowledged  common  ancestors  to 
whom  all  the  clansmen  paid  sacrifices  of  the  same 
character  as  those  offered  in  each  household.  This 
custom  stands  quite  independent  of  the  opinion 
which  may  be  held  about  the  clan's  nature.  If  the 
clan  really  grew  out  of  a  family,  and  again  in  turn 
divided  into  families,  the  ancestors  worshiped  had 
an  historical  claim  to  veneration  from  the  clansmen. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  clan  was  an  artificial  sub- 
division of  some  pre-existing  larger  body,  as  is  held 
by  some,  or,  if  it  was  an  artificial  union  of  families 
which  really  had  no  relationship  with  each  other, 
then  both  this  belief  in  the  existence  of  common 
ancestors  and  their  worship  had  a  purely  fictitious 
basis.  When  the  canton  was  formed  by  the  union 
of  clans,  the  incentive,  of  course,  was  contiguity  of 
territory.  Clans  united  because  they  lived  near 
each  other.  But  the  clansmen  did  not  acknowledge 
this.  They  feigned,  on  the  contrary,  that  they  were 
brought  together  by  ties  of  kin,  and  thought  of  the 
canton  as  having  common  ancestors  to  whom  wor- 


42  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

ship  was  to  be  paid  after  the  form  employed  by  the 
clan  and  the  family.  This  extension  of  a  law  or 
custom  by  analogy,  to  cover  ground  to  which  it 
strictly  does  not  apply  at  all,  is  called  a  "  legal  fic- 
tion/' The  use  of  this  device  was  a  powerful  forc^ 
in  molding  ancient  law  and  political  institutions,  not 
only  at  Rome  but  also  among  all  early  people.  The 
method  of  its  alleged  operation  in  this  particular 
case  is  quite  clear,  and  will  serve  as  a  general  illus- 
tration. When  men  met  as  a  family  they  found 
that,  by  a  custom,  the  origin  of  which  none  of  them 
had  seen,  they  first  of  all  recognized  by  religious 
observances  the  claims  of  their  dead  ancestors. 
This  was  also  the  case  when  they  assembled  as 
members  of  a  clan.  When  the  canton  was  formed 
artificially,  no  such  ceremonies,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
marked  its  gatherings.  But  the  exception  was  felt 
to  be  strange  and  irksome,  and  was  deliberately 
removed.  Then  sacrifices  were  offered  to  feigned 
canton  ancestors,  who,  as  time  passed  by,  came  to 
be  viewed  as  though  they  were  real  and  histori- 
cal. 

12.  The  City  of  Rome. — If  these  theories 
have  any  value,  this  fictional  extension  had  to  be 
carried  in  the  case  of  Rome  still  one  stage  further, 
because  the  city  grew  out  of  the  union  of  three 
cantons  or  clan-communities.  One  of  these  was 
composed  of  the  clans  of  the  Ramnes,  a  Latin  peo- 
ple who  dwelt  on  the  slopes  and  at  the  base  of 
the  Palatine  Hill,  and  whose  stronghold  was  on  its 
summit.  Their  territory  formed  the  first  city,  the 
:<  square  Rome  "  (Roma  quadrata).  Over  against 


STRUCTURE   OF  ANCIENT  SOCIETY.        43 

them,  on  the  Quirinal,  lived  the  Titles,  who  seem 
perhaps  to  have  been  Sabines.  These  cantons 
uniting  made  Rome.  Afterward  the  Luceres,  ap- 
parently of  Latin  race,  but  whose  previous  history 
is  all  unknown  to  us,  were  admitted.  When  the 
three  were  consolidated  in  this  way,  they  formed  a 
new  canton,  of  which  each  of  the  old  ones  became 
a  tribe  (tribus).  Together  they  occupied  at  the 
outset  a  narrow  strip  of  land  on  both  sides  of  the 
Tiber  as  far  as  its  mouth,  but  inland  their  territory 
was  limited  in  any  direction  at  a  distance  of  five 
miles  by  the  territory  of  adjacent  canton-centers. 


CHAPTER   III. 

ROME    UNDER    THE    KINGS. 

i.  The  Power  of  the  King.— In  prehistoric 
times,  when  clans  united  into  cantons,  the  govern- 
ment of  the  canton  naturally  came  to  be  modeled 
after  that  of  its  component  clans.  When  several 
cantons  united  again  as  tribes  to  make  a  new  can- 
ton, as  was  the  case  at  Rome,  the  form  of  the  primi- 
tive clan  government  was  still  followed.  As  we 
have  already  seen,  the  clan  as  well  as  the  family 
had  a  natural  head,  who  ruled  over  it  with  absolute 
power  and  offered  sacrifices  on  its  behalf  to  the 
gods.  The  natural  head  of  the  family  was,  of  course, 
the  father.  The  natural  head  of  the  clan  was  the 
oldest  male  descendant  in  the  oldest  line  from  the 
clan's  eponyjn.  But  when  the  canton  was  formed 
out  of  clans  which  united  without  any  real  blood 
relationship,  simply  because  they  lived  near  one  an- 
other, it  became  necessary  to  choose  a  leader  for  it, 
because  nature  had  provided  none.  To  this  posi- 
tion any  able-bodied  freeman  in  the  community  was 
eligible,  and  in  the  beginning  every  freeman  had  a 
voice  in  the  choice  of  its  occupant.  When  the 
leader  (rex  or  dictator]  had  been  selected,  he  at 
once,  by  universal  consent,  came  to  stand  to  the 


ROME    UNDER    THE  KINGS.  45 

state  in  precisely  the  same  relation  as  the  father  did 
to  the  family.  This  was  a  legal  fiction  of  a  piece 
with  that  which  made  all  the  members  of  a  clan 
kinsmen.  The  Romans  at  this  early  time  were  not- 
able to  conceive  of  a  government  constructed  on 
any  other  plan  than  this,  which  they  knew  so  well 
because  they  had  always  used  it  in  the  family  and 
the  clan.  The  king,  therefore,  was  the  state's  high- 
priest,  and,  to  perfect  the  parallel,  he  was  assisted 
in  the  sacred  duties  of  this  office  by  six  vestal  vir- 
gins, who  kept  the  fire  burning  in  the  atrium  of  the 
state,  as  the  mother  and  daughters  did  in  the  atrium 
of  the  household.  In  the  second  place,  his  kingly 
power  (imperium)  was,  like  the  patria  potestas,  ab- 
solute over  his  subjects.  He  could  at  his  will  de- 
prive a  citizen  of  his  life  or  his  liberty,  as  the  father 
could,  a  child.  He  was  the  sole  judge  in  all  civil 
and  criminal  disputes,  and  from  his  decision  there 
was  no  appeal.  The  public  treasury  was  under  his 
control,  and,  when  there  was  a  war,  he  called  out 
and  commanded  the  army,  and  divided  the  booty 
in  case  of  victory  among  the  warriors  according  to 
his  own  caprice.  Like  the  father  in  the  family,  he 
held  his  imperium  as  long  as  he  lived.  When  the 
father  died,  the  next  of  kin  succeeded  him.  The 
king,  before  his  death,  nominated  his  successor,  who 
was  to  take  his  place  at  the  head  of  the  state  if 
his  nomination  were  confirmed  by  the  freemen  of 
the  community. 

2.  Restrictions  on  the  King's  Power. — So 
great  power  put  into  the  hands  of  one  man  is  quite 
contrary  to  anything  which  exists  nowadays  in  civ- 

..>:.*>*"     3  7, 


46  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

ilized  nations.  The  most  despotic  of  governments 
falls  far  short  of  this  extreme.  But  we  must  re- 
member that,  when  this  constitution  came  into 
being,  Rome  was  not  a  nation,  but  a  city  of  small 
size,  where  every  freeman  might  know  and  be 
known  by  the  king.  Again,  it  was  easy  for  the 
Romans  to  submit  to  authority,  because  they  had 
all  been  under  the  patria  potestas  at  some  time  dur- 
ing their  lives,  and  many  of  them,  in  spite  of  years 
and  honors,  had  not  yet  been  emancipated  fronvit. 
On  the  other  hand,  they  knew  that  those  who  were 
called  to  the  head  of  the  state  would  have  learned  in 
advance  how  to  use  absolute  power  with  self-restraint 
and  discretion.  This  was  because  they  would  have 
been  trained  in  its  exercise  as  fathers  and  rulers  in 
their  own  houses.  In  the  family  the  father's  control 
was  limited  by  the  sanctions  of  religion,  which  pro- 
nounced a  father  accursed  who,  for  example,  should 
sell  his  married  son  into  slavery ;  by  the  fear  of  re- 
taliation should  he  use  his  power  to  the  uttermost ; 
and  by  the  customs  of  his  ancestors  (mos  majorwn), 
which  determined  the  groove  in  which  he  must  work. 
Now,  all  these  things,  and  especially  the  mos  ma- 
jorum,  operated  as  checks  also  on  the  caprice  of 
the  king.  The  king  himself,  in  the  beginning, 
was  the  source  of  law,  but  this  beginning  was 
before  the  formation  of  the  city,  when  the  com- 
munity was  nothing  more  than  a  clan.  Primitive 
law  was  the  arbitrary  decision  of  a  chieftain  on 
a  dispute  which  some  of  his  subjects  submitted  to 
him.  At  first  such  decisions  were  irregular  and 
unconnected,  but  in  the  end  they  acquired  a  cer- 


ROME    UNDER    THE  KINGS.  47 

tain  uniformity,  and  those  which  were  earlier  shaped 
as  precedents  those  which  followed.  These,  to- 
gether with  such  customs  as  grew  up  in  other  ways, 
had  come,  when  the  canton  was  formed,  to  have 
the  binding  force  of  law.  The  king's  imperium  al- 
lowed him  to  do  anything  which  he  pleased  and 
dared,  provided  it  was  in  execution  of  these  cus- 
toms of  the  ancestors.  But  there  it  stopped.  When 
he  proposed  to  alter  them,  he  had  first  to  obtain 
permission  from  the  senate  or  council  of  elders,  and 
from  the  whole  people  assembled  for  the  purpose. 

3.  The  Comitia  Curiata. — In  the  beginning, 
any  member  of  any  one  of  the  clans  which  were 
included  in  the  three  original  Roman  tribes,  was  a 
Roman  citizen.  So,  too,  were  his  children  born  in 
lawful  wedlock,  and  those  who  were  adopted  by 
him  according  to  the  forms  of  law.  Illegitimate 
children,  on  the  other  hand,  were  excluded  from 
the  number  of  citizens.  These  earliest  Romans 
called  themselves  patricians  (patricii,  "children  of 
their  fathers  "),  for  some  reason  about  which  we  can 
not  be  sure.  Perhaps  it  was  in  order  to  distinguish 
themselves  from  their  illegitimate  kinsmen  and  from 
such  other  people  as  lived  about,  having  no  pretense 
of  blood  connection  with  them,  and  who  were, 
therefore,  incapable  of  contracting  lawful  marriages 
according  to  the  patricians'  view  of  this  religious 
ceremony.  The  patricians,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
were  grouped  together  in  families,  clans,  and  tribes, 
partly  on  the  basis  of  blood  relationship,  but  chiefly 
on  the  basis  of  common  religious  worship.  Besides 
these  groups,  there  was  still  another  in  the  state, 


48  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

the  curia,  or  "ward,"  which  stood  between  the 
clan  and  the  tribe.  In  the  earliest  times,  tradition 
said,  ten  families  formed  a  clan,  ten  clans  a  curia, 
and  ten  curia  a  tribe.  These  numbers,  if  they 
ever  had  any  historical  existence,  could  not  have 
maintained  themselves  for  any  length  of  time  in 
the  case  of  the  clans  and  families,  for  such  organ- 
isms of  necessity  would  increase  and  decrease  quite 
irregularly.  About  the  nature  of  the  curia  we  have 
practically  no  direct  information.  The  organization 
had  become  a  mere  name  at  an  early  period  in  the 
.  city's  history.  Whether  the  members  of  a  curia 
thought  of  themselves  as  having  closer  kinship  with 
one  another  than  with  members  of  other  curia  is 
not  clear.  We  know,  however,  that  the  curia  were 
definite  political  subdivisions  of  the  city,  perhaps 
like  modern  wards,  and  that  each  curia  had  a  com- 
mon religious  worship  for  its  members'  participa- 
tion. Thus  much,  at  any  rate,  is  significant,  be- 
cause it  has  to  do  with  the  form  of  Rome's  primi- 
tive popular  assembly.  When  the  king  wanted  to 
harangue  the  people  (populus,  cf. popular,  "to  dev- 
astate "),  he  called  them  to  a  contio  (compounded 
of  co  and  venio).  But,  if  he  wanted  to  propose  to 
them  action  which  implied  a  change  in  the  organic 
law  of  the  state,  he  summoned  them  to  a  comitia 
(compounded  of  con  and  eo\  To  this  the  name 
comitia  curiata  was  given,  because  its  members  voted 
by  curia.  Each  curia  had  one  vote,  the  character 
of  which  was  determined  by  a  majority  of  its  mem- 
bers, and  a  majority  of  the  curia  decided  the  matter 
for  the  comitia. 


ROME    UNDER    THE  KINGS.  49 

4.  The  Functions  of  the  Comitia  Curiata. 
— When  the  freemen  were  thus  assembled  in  re- 
sponse to  his  call,  the  king  stated  to  them  his  pro- 
posals, and   asked   their   indorsement.      Here  are 
some  of  the  things  for  which  their  permission  was 
necessary.    No  man  could  make  a  will,  disposing 
of  his  property,  without  first  consulting  the  people 
through  the  medium  of  the  king.    This  was  because, 
by  the  customs  of  the  ancestors,  property  did  not 
belong  to  the  individual  to  bequeath  at  his  caprice, 
but  was  his  only  as  the  representative  of  the  family, 
to  be  transmitted  on  his  death  to  the  next  of  kin 
who  should  succeed  him  in  maintaining  the  family 
sacrifices.     The  king  could  call  out  the  troops  for 
a  defensive  war  on  his  own  responsibility,  but,  for 
an  offensive  war,  he  had  to  obtain  the  permission 
of  the  people,  because,  in  general,  an  offensive  war 
implied  a  violation  of  a  treaty  with  the  city  against 
which  it  was  declared,  and  a  treaty  was,  of  course, 
a  part  of  the  law  of  the  state.    Again,  pardon  could 
not  be  given  to  a  malefactor,  once  condemned,  until 
all  the  citizens  had  expressed  their  opinion  on  the 
question  in  the  comitta,  for  the  sentence,  when  pro- 
nounced by  the  king,  was  like  a  statute,  binding 
unless  repealed  by  the  regular  course  of  procedure. 
And,  for  similar  reasons,  the  admission  of  a  stranger 
into  a  family,  or  of  a  new  clan  into  a  tribe,  required 
the  same  formal  consent  if  it  were  to  be  legal. 

5.  The  Senate  and  its  Functions. — In  pre- 
historic times,  the  clans  which  subsequently  united 
to  form  cantons  had  each  possessed  a  monarchical 
constitution  of  its  own.     When  the  clan  govern- 


50  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

ments  were  merged  in  that  of  the  canton,  the  mon- 
archs  (reges)  of  these  clans  became  senators  or  eld- 
ers in  the  new  community.  In  the  case  of  Rome 
the  number  of  senators  was  three  hundred,  because 
in  the  beginning,  as  tradition  said,  there  were  three 
hundred  clans.  In  regal  times  the  king  appointed 
the  senators.  Probably,  at  first,  he  chose  one  from 
each  clan,  honoring  in  this  way  some  man  whose 
age  had  given  him  experience  and  whose  ability 
made  his  opinion  entitled  to  consideration.  Aft- 
erward, when  the  rigidity  of  the  arrangement  by 
clans  was  lost,  the  senators  were  selected  from  the 
whole  body  of  the  people,  without  any  attempt  at 
preserving  the  clan  representation.  Primarily  the 
senate  was  not  a  legislative  body.  When  the  king 
died  without  having  nominated  his  successor,  the 
senators  served  successively  as  interreges  ("kings 
for  an  interval "),  for  periods  of  five  days  each, 
until  a  rex  was  chosen.  It  was  then  their  duty  in 
turn,  as  they  held  the  office,  beginning  with  the 
second,  to  name  to  the  populus  a  suitable  man  for 
king.  The  first  interrex  did  not  suggest  a  rex,  be- 
cause he  had  received  his  office,  not  by  appoint- 
ment but  by  lot.  The  second  interrex  and  all  who 
succeeded  him,  however,  having  been  named  each 
by  his  predecessor,  had  a  clear  title  for  the  pur- 
pose. By  this  fiction  the  rex  was  always  nominated 
by  the  monarch  occupying  the  throne  before  him 
with  an  unbroken  succession.  This  general  duty 
was  the  first  of  the  senate's  original  functions. 
Again,  when  the  citizens  had  passed  a  law  at  the 
suggestion  of  the  king,  the  senate  had  a  right  (pa- 


ROME    UNDER    THE  KINGS.  51 

trum  auctoritas)  to  veto  it,  if  it  seemed  contrary  to 
the  spirit  of  the  city's  institutions.  Finally,  as  the 
senate  was  composed  of  men  of  experience  and 
ability,  the  king  used  to  consult  it  in  times  of  per- 
sonal doubt  or  national  danger.  When  thus  called 
on,  the  senators  could  offer  advice  to  the  king,  who 
followed  it  or  not  according  to  his  will. 

6.  The  Early  Greatness  of  Rome. — Rome's 
pre-eminence  over  her  neighbors  in  primitive  times 
seems  to  have  been  largely  due  to  the  advantages 
which  her  position  gave  her  in  a  commercial  direc- 
tion. The  immediate  site  of  the  city  was  surpassed 
in  fertility  and  healthfulness  by  that  of  most  of  the 
Latin  towns  ;  and  the  Campagna,  or  plain  about 
Rome,  when  compared,  for  example,  with  Campa- 
nia, was  not  especially  productive.  But  for  com- 
merce, as  it  was  then  carried  on,  her  situation  was 
well  adapted.  For  one  thing,  the  city  was  on  the 
Tiber,  fifteen  miles  from  its  mouth  in  a  straight 
line,  but  twenty-seven  if  the  windings  of  the  river 
be  followed.  A  close  connection  was  thus  made 
between  it  and  the  interior  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  coast  on  the  other,  and  a  highway  formed  for 
foreign  and  inland  trade.  Its  remoteness  from  the 
sea  saved  it  from  the  attacks  of  passing  marauders, 
to  which  the  Etruscan  and  Greek  cities  on  the 
coast  were  exposed.  At  the  same  time,  the  shelter 
afforded  by  the  river,  which  at  Rome  is  twenty  feet 
deep  and  three  hundred  feet  wide,  must  have  made 
it  a  well-known  harbor  on  the  unindented  Italian 
coast.  It  was  the  natural  market-place  for  the 
wide  region  drained  by  the  Tiber  and  its  tributa- 


52  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

ries,  because  it  was  the  place  nearest  to  the  sea 
which  was  capable  of  the  fortification  requisite 
for  a  city.  Here  the  farmers  from  the  Campagna 
brought  their  produce,  and  here  the  boatmen  com- 
ing down  the  river  stopped,  as  at  the  last  point  be- 
fore they  ventured  on  the  sea,  or  to  trade  with  the 
merchants  from  abroad.  Long  before  the  dawn  of 
authentic  history,  the  city  had  grown  to  be  a  com- 
pact and  prosperous  business  center,  inhabited  by 
a  trading  and  money-making  people.  These  early 
Romans,  however,  were  not  an  exclusively  trading 
people,  as  for  example  were  the  inhabitants  of  some 
of  the  Etruscan  towns,  like  Caere.  They  tilled 
the  soil  in  their  vicinity,  and  raised,  as  did  their 
neighbors,  grain  and  grapes,  olives  and  figs,  cattle 
and  swine  and  poultry.  With  the  Etruscans  they 
exchanged  cattle,  slaves,  and  sometimes  grain,  for 
copper  and  silver,  and  with  the  copper  and  silver 
they  bought  from  the  Greeks  of  Magna  Grsecia  and 
Sicily  ornaments  of  gold,  clay  pottery,  linen  and 
leather,  ivory  and  purple  and  frankincense.  The 
people  who  lived  in  a  community  like  this  would 
naturally  be  of  a  strong  and  aggressive  disposi- 
tion. And  such  the  early  Romans  were.  Enter- 
ing first  as  adventurers,  attracted  by  the  natural 
advantages  of  the  situation,  they  formed  a  race 
whose  character  combined  the  alertness  and  in- 
telligence of  a  commercial  people  with  the  stability 
and  love  of  country  which  belong  to  a  farming 
population. 

7.  The  Evidences  of  this  Early  Commer- 
cial Greatness. — We  state  this  view  of  Rome's 


ROME    UNDER    THE  KINGS.  53 

importance,  as  a  commercial  center  in  prehistoric 
times,  without  qualification,  although  it  is  by  no 
means  universally  or  even  commonly  acceded  to. 
In  the  minds  of  many  students  of  Roman  history 
war  and  farming  were,  at  the  outset  and  for  a  long 
time,  the  only  national  occupations,  and  the  early 
Romans  were  little  better  than  savages,  and  their 
city,  a  collection  of  hovels.  This  opinion,  it  may 
be  said  in  passing,  is  quite  inconsistent  with  many 
traditions,  generally  accepted  as  trustworthy.  Rome 
could  not  have  been  a  village,  but  must  have  grown 
already  before  the  dawn  of -authentic  history  into  a 
large  and  wealthy  city,  if  it  be  true,  for  example, 
that  the  public  works,  which  are  attributed  to  the 
kings,  like  the  Capitoline  Temple,  the  Circus  Maxi- 
mus,  the  wall  of  Servius,  and  the  Cloaca  Maxima, 
were  really  built  by  them,  or  if,  in  the  original  form 
of  the  comitia  centuriata,  the  value  of  a  man's  vote 
varied  with  the  amount  of  his  property.  But  neither 
of  these  things  is  quite  beyond  dispute,  and  this 
whole  subject,  like  everything  about  the  period, 
must  always  be  more  or  less  a  matter  of  uncertainty. 
Here,  however,  seems  a  good  place  to  illustrate  the 
sort  of  material  out  of  which  such  a  theory  as  we 
have  advanced  is  constructed.  There  are  available, 
then,  several  pieces  of  evidence  which  go  to  prove 
that  Rome  was  a  point  of  considerable  trade  from 
the  earliest  times.  We  give  them  one  after  the 
other:  (i)  The  city's  first  colony  was  Ostia,  a  sea- 
port town.  This  clearly  was  founded  neither  with 
a  view  to  the  military  defenses  of  the  city,  nor  be- 
cause the  country  about  it  was  good  for  farming, 


54  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

but  to  meet  the  purposes  of  commerce.  Again  (2), 
from  time  immemorial,  duties  were  levied  at  Ostia 
on  imports  and  exports  intended  for  sale ;  and  (3) 
strangers  had  been  allowed  the  right  of  acquiring 
property  at  Rome  with  practically  no  restrictions. 
These,  however,  are  not  the  devices  and  methods 
of  farmers,  but  of  men  made  shrewd  and  broad- 
minded  by  contact  with  the  world.  The  presence 
of  (4)  the  galley  in  the  city's  arms  shows  that  trade 
on  the  sea  was  prominent  in  the  life  of  the  people ; 
and,  finally,  as  an  argument  from  philology,  we 
have  (5)  the  interchange,  between  the  Latin  lan- 
guage and  the  Greek  of  Magna  Grsecia  and  Sicily, 
of  many  words  for  the  commodities  and  instruments 
of  commerce.  Reference  has  already  been  made 
to  this  last  as  indicating  the  direction  of  early 
Roman  trade,  but,  of  course,  it  is  equally  valuable 
as  establishing  its  existence.  No  one  of  these 
things  by  itself  could  shape  our  final  judgment  ; 
and,  even  if  we  accept  what  they  suggest  when 
taken  together,  the  inference  will  not  be  entirely 
free  from  doubt.  We  think,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  their  bearing  is  direct  and  quite  conclu- 
sive. 

8.  The  Plebeians.— We  are  now  prepared  to 
understand  the  origin  of  a  distinct  body  of  people 
which  grew  up  alongside  of  the  patricians  of  the 
Roman  state  during  the  latter  part  of  the  regal  pe- 
riod and  after  its  close.  These  were  the  plebeians 
(plebs,  "the  crowd,"  cf.pleo,  to  fill),  who  dwelt  in 
the  Roman  territory  both  within  and  without  the 
walls  of  the  city.  They  did  not  belong  to  the  old 


ROME    UNDER    THE  KINGS.  55 

clans  which  formed  the  three  original  tribes,  nor 
did  they  have  any  real  or  pretended  kinship  with 
them,  nor,  for  that  matter,  with  one  another,  except 
within  the  ordinary  limits  of  nature.  They  were, 
at  the  outset,  simply  an  ill-assorted  mass  of  resi- 
dents, entirely  outside  of  the  orderly  arrangement 
which  we  have  described.  There  were  three  sources 
of  this  multitude  : 

I.  When  the  city  grew  strong  enough,  it  began 
to  extend  its  boundaries,  and  first  at  the  expense 
of  the  cantons  nearest  it,  between  the  Tiber  and 
the  Anio.     When  Rome  conquered  a  canton,  she 
destroyed  the  walls  of  its  citadel.     Its  inhabitants 
were  sometimes  permitted  to  occupy  their  villages 
as  before,  and  sometimes  were  removed  to  Rome. 
In  either  case,  Rome  was  henceforth  to  be  their 
place  of  meeting  and  refuge,  and  they  themselves, 
instead  of  being  reduced  to  the  condition  of  slaves, 
were  attached  to  the  state  as  non-citizens. 

II.  The  relation  of  guest-friendship  so  called,  in 
ancient  times,  could  be  entered  into  between  indi- 
viduals with  their  families  and  descendants,  and 
also  between  individuals  and  a  state  or  between 
two  states.      Provision   for   such   guest-friendship 
was  undoubtedly  made  in  the  treaties  which  bound 
together  Rome  on  the  one  side  and  the  various  in- 
dependent cities  of  its  neighborhood  on  the  other. 
Under  these  treaties  citizens  of  one  allied   com- 
munity were  protected  within  the  territory  of  an- 
other, and  allowed  to  carry  on  trade  there  freely, 
and  to  hold  real  and  personal  property.     The  com- 
mercial advantages  of  Rome's  situation  attracted  to 

6 


56  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

it,  in  the  course  of  time,  a  great  many  men  from 
the  Latin  cities  in  the  vicinity,  who  remained  per- 
manently settled  there  without  acquiring  Roman 
citizenship. 

III.  A  third  constituent  element  of  the//<?fo  was 
formed  by  the  clients  ("  the  listeners,"  cluere).  It 
is  very  possible  that,  when  th/fr  Romans  came  into 
Latium,  they  brought  clients  with  them.  These 
were  non-freemen,  either  regarded  as  dependents 
of  the  whole  clan  or  more  commonly  subject  to  the 
household  jurisdiction  of  some  pater  familias,  called, 
with  reference'  to  them,  patronus.  They  differed 
widely  from  slaves  in  that  they  were  allowed  to 
hold  property  and  engage  in  trade.  New  clients 
were,  in  early  times  being  constantly  created  in  one' 
of  two  ways  :  in  the  first  place,  foreigners  coming 
to  Rome  might  put  themselves  under  the  protection 
of  some  Roman  citizen,  to  whom  they  thenceforth 
owed  loyalty  ;  in  the  second  place,  a  slave,  if  freed, 
did  not  become  a  citizen,  but  a  client  of  his  former 
master's.  The  clients  participated  in  a  subordinate 
way  in  the  religious  worship  of  the  clan  and  family, 
and  were  considered  bound  to  stand  by  the  mem- 
bers of  their  clan,  sometimes  with  contributions 
from  their  property  and  sometimes  with  arms.  In 
the  beginning  of  the  long  struggle  between  the  pa- 
tricians and  plebeians,  the  clients  are  represented 
as  having  sided  with  the  former.  But  even  then 
many  of  them  must  have  appreciated  the  commu- 
nity of  interests  which  united  them  with  the  other 
classes  of  plebeians ;  and  afterward,  when  the  lapse 
of  time  had  weakened  their  sense  of  dependence 


ROME    UNDER    THE  KINGS.  57 

on  their  patrons,  they  became,  as  a  body,  identified 
with  the  plebeians. 

9.  The  Primitive  Political  Condition  of 
the  Plebeians. — The  rights  of  a  Roman  citizen 
came,  at  a  later  period  of  the  city's  history,  to  be 
classified  with  great  precision  and  many  refine- 
ments, but  here  in  ^he  beginning,  of  course,  were 
hazy  and  uncertain.  One  set  of  them,  however, 
was  clearly  enough  concerned  whh  his  capacity  to 
participate  in  the  affairs  of  the  state,  anjd  another 
with  his  position  before  the  kw  .as  a  member  of 
society.  The  first  were  his  public  eights,  arid  the 
second  his  private  rights.  These  1'ast,  under  a 
subsequent  legal  arrangement,  were  all  embraced 
under  two  heads:  (i)  the  right  of  engaging  in 
trade  at  Rome  under  the  protection  of  the  Ro4fe,n 
laws  concerning  trade,  which  was  called  the  jus  com- 
merd^  and  (2)  the  right  of  marrying  a  Roman  citi- 
zen under  the  assurance  that  his  children  would 
be  Roman  citizens,  and  that  he  would  have  over 
them  the  control  which  the  Roman  constitution  se- 
cured to  fathers.  This  was  called  the  jus  commit. 
All  the  plebeians  seem  to  have  enjoyed  from  the 
outset  the  jus  commerci,  \thich  under  the  early 
kings  can  not  have  meantT-  anything  more  than  that 
they  were  protected  %  in  the  acquisition  of  prop- 
erty equally  with  the  patricians.  When  the  regular 
Roman  courts  were  invented,  the  first  two  classes 
of  plebeians  could  use  them  freely,  suing  and  main- 
taining their  rights  when  sued,  in  their  own  names, 
but  the  clients  had  to  bring  their  suits  through  the 
medium  of  their  patrons.  On  the  other  hand,  they 


58  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

were  all  in  general  denied  the  jus  connubi.  Thus 
busy  in  trade,  they  rapidly  gained  property,  and 
marrying  among  themselves  and  leaving  their  es- 
tates to  their  children,  they  came  to  rival  the  patri- 
cians in  wealth  and  to  excel  them  in  numbers.  All 
this  while,  however,  they  were  rigidly  excluded 
from  participation  in  the  government  of  the  state. 
That  is,  no  plebeian  could  be  king,  could  sit  in  the 
senate,  or  vote  in  the  comitia  curiata.  The  reason 
for  this  was  in  no  small  degree  religious,  and  of  a 
piece  with  their  exclusion  from  the  jus  connubi. 
The  plebeian  woman  could  not  marry  into  a  Roman 
family,  because  this  would  admit  her  to  the  worship 
of  gods  in  whose  favor  she  had  no  share.  So  the 
Romans  resisted  the  admission  of  foreigners  to 
pofltical  privileges,  because  they  were  not  willing  to 
intrust  the  sacrifices  to  the  city's  ancestors  to  men 
who  had  no  kinship  with  them.  This  was  a  state 
of  affairs  which  was  long  maintained,  because  there 
is  nothing  more  powerful  in  its  influence  over  men's 
minds  than  religious  superstition,  but  in  the  end  it 
had  to  yield  to  a  more  just  and  equal  system. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE    EARLIEST     REFORMS    IN    THE    ROMAN    CONSTI- 
TUTION. 

i.  The  Burdens  of  Citizenship.  —  Under 
the  original  constitution  of  Rome,  the  patricians 
alone,  as  we  have  seen,  enjoyed  political  rights  in 
the  state,  but  at  the  same  time  they  were  forced  to 
bear  the  whole  burden  of  political  duties.  In  these 
last  were  included,  for  example,  the  tilling  of  the 
king's  fields,  the  construction  of  public  works  and 
buildings,  and  the  execution  of  the  king's  com- 
mands. In  the  earliest  times  there  was  little  need 
of  direct  taxation,  because  the  revenues  from  im- 
ports and  exports,  and  the  spoils  of  war,  sufficed  to 
meet  the  expenses  of  the  state  ;  but  when  for  any 
reason  the  public  treasury  became  empty,  a  tribu- 
tum,  or  forced  loan,  was  exacted  from  the  patri- 
cians, to  be  paid  back  at  some  later  time.  Citizens 
alone,  also,  were  liable  to  service  in  the  army,  and 
therefore  on  the  patricians  fell  exclusively  the  dan- 
gers and  toils  of  the  city's  wars.  A  state  of  affairs 
like  this  had  the  effect  of  making  the  plebeians  a 
subject  population,  under  the  direct  protection  of 
the  patricians.  The  political  burdens,  especially 
those  connected  with  the  army,  grew  heavier  natu- 


60  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

rally  as  the  power  of  Rome  increased,  and  it  was 
seen  to  be  an  injustice  that  one  part  of  the  people, 
and  that,  too,  the  smaller  part,  should  alone  feel 
their  weight.  This  led  to  the  first  important  modi- 
fication of  the  Roman  constitution,  which  was  made 
even  before  the  close  of  the  regal  period.  Accord- 
ing to  tradition,  its  author  was  the  king  Servius 
Tullius,  and  its  general  object  was  to  make  all  men 
who  held  land  in  the  state  liable  to  military  service. 
It  thus  conferred  no  political  rights  on  the  ple- 
beians, but  assigned  to  them  their  share  of  political 
duties. 

2.  The  Servian  Classification. — The  ar- 
rangement which  was  made  for  this  purpose  has 
great  significance,  because  in  it  another  principle 
of  classification  than  that  which  was  based  on  the 
family  was  recognized  for  the  first  time.  There  is 
serious  reason  for  doubting  whether  the  details  of 
the  organization  which  have  been  given  to  us  by 
the  Latin  and  Greek  writers  refer  to  its  original 
shape,  and  not  rather  to  one  which  it  assumed  un- 
der some  subsequent  reform.  But,  however  this 
may  be,  real  or  fictitious  relationship  seems  not 
to  have  entered  at  all  as  a  factor  into  the  system. 
According  to  tradition,  all  the  freeholders  in  the 
city  between  the  ages  of  seventeen  and  sixty,  with 
some  exceptions,  were  divided,  without  distinction 
as  to  birth,  into  five  classes  (classis,  "  a  summon- 
ing," calo)  for  service  in  the  infantry  according  to 
the  size  of  their  estates.  Those  who  were  excepted 
served  as  horsemen.  These  were  selected  from 
among  the  very  richest  men  in  the  state,  some  be- 


REFORMS  IN  THE  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION.  61 

cause  they  had  served  in  the  cavalry  in  the  earlier 
arrangement  of  the  army,  and  others  on  some  other 
principle.  The  non-freeholders,  too,  were  employed 
as  workmen  or  musicians,  or  compelled  to  follow 
the  army  as  a  reserve,  to  be  called  on  in  an  emer- 
gency, and  orphans  and  widows  were  included  by 
a  tax  placed  on  them  for  the  cost  and  maintenance 
of  the  knights'  horses.  Of  the  five  classes  of  in- 
fantry, the  first  contained  the  richest  men,  but  the 
standard  seems  to  have  been  placed  low  enough  to 
make  it  the  largest  numerically.  It  and  all  the 
other  classes  were  again  divided  into  two  sections, 
one  containing  all  the  men  over  forty-five  years  of 
age  ;  these  were  called  "  seniores"  The  other  con- 
tained all  younger  than  that,  and  they  were  called 
"juniores"  At  the  first  marshaling,  the  seniores 
in  each  class  seem  to  have  outnumbered  the  juni- 
ores.  The  members  of  the  first  class  were  required 
to  come  to  the  battle  array  in  complete  armor,  while 
less  was  demanded  of  the  other  four.  Each  class 
was  subdivided  into  centuries,  or  bodies  of  a  hun- 
dred men  each,  for  convenience  in  arranging  the 
army.  There  were  in  all  one  hundred  and  ninety- 
three  centuries,  of  which  eighty  were  included  in 
the  first  class,  eighteen  in  the  cavalry,  five  among 
the  non-freeholders,  and  the  rest  in  the  other  four 
classes.  This  absolute  number  and  this  apportion- 
ment were  continued,  as  the  population  increased 
and  the  distribution  of  wealth  altered,  until  the  name 
century  came  to  have  a  purely  conventional  mean- 
ing, even  if  it  had  any  other  in  the  beginning.  Hence- 
forth a  careful  census  was  taken  every  fourth  year, 


62  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

and  all  freeholders  were  made  subject  to  the  tri- 
butum. 

3.  How  the  Exercitus  of  Servius  became 
the  Comitia  Centuriata. — The  arrangement  of 
the  people,  thus  described,  was  primarily  made 
simply  for  military  purposes.  The  primitive  array 
of  the  army  now  gave  place  to  a  new  order,  and 
the  Romans,  plebeians  as  well  as  patricians,  assem- 
bled at  the  call  of  the  king  in  the  Campus  Martius 
in  preparation  for  war,  and  took  their  places  in  the 
ranks  with  the  century  to  which  they  belonged. 
Gradually,  however,  this  organization  came  to  have 
political  significance,  until  finally  these  men,  got 
together  for  what  is  the  chief  political  duty  in  a 
primitive  state,  enjoyed  what  political  privileges 
there  were.  As  we  have  already  seen,  two  of  the 
most  important  functions  of  the  comitia  curiata  had 
been  the  declaration  of  offensive  war  and  the  au- 
thorization of  the  wills  of  citizens,  disposing  of 
their  property  contrary  to  the  mos  majorum.  It  was 
so  natural,  that  we  can  easily  understand  how  both 
these  matters  passed  from  the  control  of  the  patri- 
cians' assembly  to  that  of  the  army.  Nothing  could 
be  more  obviously  just  than  that  the  men  who  were 
to  fight  the  battles  should  decide  whether  the  war 
was  to  be  waged  or  not,  and  nothing  more  conven- 
ient than  that  the  same  men  should  have  power  to 
authorize  the  wills  of  their  comrades  which  would 
be  made  in  large  numbers  just  before  a  fight. 
These  two  things  paved  the  way  for  a  general  trans- 
fer of  legislative  functions,  and  in  the  end  it  became 
the  rule  for  the  magistrate  to  obtain  consent  in  im- 


REFORMS  IN  THE  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION.  63 

portant  things,  not  from  the  assembly  of  the  curi(Z> 
which  met  in  the  Forum,  or  on  the  Capitol,  but 
from  the  army  assembled  without  the  walls,  when 
all  the  soldiers  voted  by  centuries,  plebeians  as  well 
as  patricians,  and  where  not  birth,  but  wealth  and 
age,  held  the  power.  At  the  same  time,  the  election 
of  the  subordinate  military  commanders,  centurions 
and  tribunes,  devolved  upon  the  soldiers,  and  to 
these  positions  any  warrior  was  eligible.  Of  course, 
all  this  growth  in  power  was  very  gradual.  We 
must  not  look  on  it  as  a  matter  of  years.  Centu- 
ries may  have  been  consumed  in  the  transformation. 
We  have  no  chronology  of  this  early  period  by 
which  to  mark  the  flight  of  time.  But  in  the  end 
this  exercitus  of  Servius  Tullius  formed  another 
popular  assembly,  the  comitia  centuriata^  which  sup- 
planted the  comitia  curiata  entirely,  except  in  matters 
connected  with  the  religion  of  the  family  and  very 
soon  of  purely  formal  significance.  This  organiza- 
tion, therefore,  became  of  the  highest  civil  impor- 
tance, and  was  continued  for  civil  purposes  long 
after  the  army  was  marshaled  on  quite  another 
plan. 

4.  The  Establishment  of  the  Consular 
Government. — The  culmination  in  the  power  of 
the  comitia  centuriata  was  reached  only  after  the  mo- 
narchical form  of  government  had  been  abolished. 
The  last  of  the  kings  lost  his  position  at  the  head 
of  the  state,  as  far  as  we  can  surmise  from  the  le- 
gends, because  he  persistently  violated  the  mos  ma- 
jorum,  and  pushed  his  exactions  up  to  a  point  where 
retaliation  became  justifiable.  His  expulsion  was 


64  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

the  work  of  the  patricians  exclusively,  who  pro- 
ceeded to  remodel  the  government  after  a  pattern 
which  should  better  secure  to  them  political  power. 
Henceforth,  the  priestly  duties  of  the  king  were, 
at  least  in  name,  to  be  discharged  by  a  new  officer, 
the  rex  sacrorum,  who  was  to  hold  his  position  for 
life.  The  civil  duties  of  the  king  were  given  to  two 
magistrates,  chosen  for  a  year,  who  were  at  first  called 
prcztores  or  "  generals,"  judices  or  "  judges,'7  or  con- 
sules  (cf.  con  "  together  "  and  salio  "  to  leap  ")  or  "  col- 
leagues." In  the  matter  of  their  power,  no  violent 
departure  was  made  from  the  imperium  of  the  king. 
The  greatest  limitation  on  the  consuls  was  the  short 
period  for  which  they  were  at  the  head  of  the  state  ; 
but  even  here  they  were  thought  of,  by  a  fiction,  as 
voluntarily  abdicating  at  the  expiration  of  their  term, 
and  as  nominating  their  successors,  although  they 
were  required  to  nominate  the  men  who  had  already 
been  selected  in  the  comitia  centuriata.  Another 
limitation  was  the  result  of  the  dual  character  of 
the  magistracy.  "The  imperium  was  not  divided 
between  the  consuls,  but  each  possessed  it  in  full, 
as  the  king  had  before.  When,  therefore,  they  did 
not  agree,  the  veto  of  the  one  prevailed  over  the 
proposal  of  the  other,  and  there  was  no  action. 
If  no  great  interests  were  at  stake,  such  mutual 
checks  served  a  good  purpose,  because  they  saved 
the  state  from  the  dangers  of  mismanagement  and 
usurpation.  But,  in  times  of  emergency,  there  was 
need  of  greater  vigor  and  decision  in  administration 
than  could  be  expected  from  a  double  head.  On 
such  occasions,  one  of  the  consuls  nominated  a 


REFORMS  IN  THE  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION.  65 

third  "  colleague,"  to  whom  both  himself  and  his 
original  colleague  became  subordinate. 

5.  The  Dictator  and  the  Quaestors. — This 
third  colleague  was  called  dictator,  and  on  his  acces- 
sion he  appointed  as  his  assistant  a  "  master  of  the 
horse  "  (magister  equitum).  His  term  of  office  ex- 
pired with  that  of  the  consul  who  nominated  him, 
and  in  any  event  was  limited  to  six  months.  His 
power  was  quite  extraordinary,  as  the  king's  had 
been,  and,  when  contrasted  with  the  consul's,  shows 
what  reductions,  further  than  those  already  sug- 
gested, the  supreme  magistrate's  rule  had  suffered 
by  the  abolition  of  the  monarchy.  The  dictator 
.was  absolute  both  within  and  without  the  city,  and 
from  his  judgment  there  was  no  appeal  unless  he 
chose  to  grant  one.  The  consuls,  on  the  other 
hand,  were  required  to  allow  an  appeal  to  the  peo- 
ple, when  capital  or  corporal  punishment  had  been 
pronounced  upon  a  citizen.  This,  of  course,  was  a 
limit  on  their  imperium.  Again,  when  the  dictator 
laid  down  his  power,  there  was  no  tribunal  before 
which  he  could  be  called  to  account  for  the  way 
in  which  he  had  exercised  it.  But  the  consuls,  at 
the  expiration  of  their  term  of  office,  were  sub- 
ject to  legal  prosecution,  like  any  other  citizens, 
for  the  misdemeanors  of  which  they  had  been 
guilty.  At  the  same  time,  the  care  and  adminis- 
tration of  the  public  treasury  were  transferred  to 
two  magistrates,  who  had  been  called  into  exist- 
ence from  time  to  time  under  the  regal  constitution 
at  the  convenience  of  the  king.  These  were  the  so- 
called  quaestors,  who  gained  their  name  (original- 


66  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

ly  qutzstores  parricidi^  "  trackers  of  foul  murder  ") 
from  their  earliest  function  of  assisting  the  king  in 
the  detection  of  criminals.  They  now  became 
regular  officers  in  the  city,  exercising  subordinate 
judicial  powers,  and  acting  as  state  treasurers. 

6.  What  the  Plebeians  gained  by  these 
Changes. — Nothing  could  be  further  from  the 
truth  than  to  look  on  this  change  from  monarchy 
to  republic  as  due  to  anything  like  a  popular  upris- 
ing, such  as  has  been  made,  now  and  again,  in 
modern  times,  with  the  purpose  of  securing  the  con- 
trol of  the  state  to  the  governed.  This  struggle  for 
the  limitation  of  the  magistrates'  power  was  made 
entirely  within  the  body  of  the  patricians,  and  it 
was  only  indirectly  that  the  plebeians  were  involved 
in  it.  In  the  dangers  which  threatened  the  state 
when  the  expelled  kings  took  up  arms  in  order  to 
effect  their  restoration,  the  plebs  had  co-operated 
with  the  aristocracy  against  them.  But  the  new 
government  which  was  evolved  out  of  this  revolu- 
tion was  an  aristocracy,  which  granted  but  few 
privileges  to  the  crowd  in  return  for  their  assist- 
ance. It  seems  clear,  however,  that  at  the  close 
of  the  regal  period  the  plebeians  were  admitted  to 
membership  in  the  curia  and  to  votes  in  the  comi- 
tia  curiata.  This  made  the  comitia  curiata  a  purely 
democratic  assembly  ;  but,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
all  its  real  powers  had  passed  over  to  the  comitia 
centuriata.  Here,  too,  the  plebeians  had  a  voice, 
but,  as  the  cavalry  and  the  first  class  included 
ninety-eight  of  the  one  hundred  and  ninety-three 
centuries,  the  measures  of  the  assembly  were  al- 


REFORMS  IN  THE  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION.  67 

ways  decided  by  the  richest  citizens.  The  presence 
of  the  plebeians,  however,  in  these  legislative  bod- 
ies, even  in  this  subordinate  way,  was  significant 
and  valuable  in  their  progress  toward  political 
equality.  At  this  point,  also,  some  of  them  gained 
admission  to  the  senate,  into  the  hands  of  which 
the  control  of  the  state  was  rapidly  passing.  In  re- 
gal times,  when  the  senate  was  acting  in  its  capaci- 
ty of  adviser  to  the  king,  men  who  were  not  sena- 
tors had  sometimes  been  called  in  to  assist  in  the 
deliberations.  Now,  at  the  beginning  of  the  repub- 
lic, some  of  these,  among  whom  were  some  plebeians, 
were  added  permanently  to  the  list  of  senators 
(patres).  They  were  called  conscripti  ("  added  to 
the  roll "),  and  were  allowed  to  vote,  though  not  to 
debate,  when  the  matter  before  the  senate  was  the 
giving  of  advice.  The  number  of  senators,  how- 
ever, including  these  conscripti,  continued  to  be 
three  hundred. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    FIGHT    WITHOUT    THE    CITY. 

i.  The  Non-Italian  Races  of  Italy. — The 

people  who  inhabited  Italy  south  of  the  Rubicon,  at 
the  dawn  of  history,  were  of  three  separate  stocks, 
so  far  as  language  is  an  indication  of  race  : 

Calabria,  and  perhaps  Apulia,  was  inhabited  by 
a  people  whom  the  Greeks  called  lapygians  or 
Messapians.  Their  language,  of  which  we  learn  a 
little  from  inscriptions  found  in  Terra  d'  Otranto 
(the  southeastern  peninsula  of  Italy),  is  allied  with 
the  Latin  and  the  Greek.  They  were  probably  the 
first  of  the  Indo-European  family  to  enter  Italy. 

In  the  northwest  were  the  Etruscans  or  Tuscans, 
whose  language — preserved  only  in  inscriptions, 
mostly  sepulchral,  containing  little  more  than 
names,  and  on  a  pair  of  ivory  dice,  on  which  the 
first  six  numerals  can  be  read — has  no  undisputed 
connection  with  that  of  any  branch  of  the  Indo- 
European  group.  They  entered  Italy  later  than 
their  neighbors,  and  took  possession  of  the  land 
around  the  Po,  of  Etruria  proper,  and  afterward  of 
the  coast  of  the  Volscian  country  and  of  northern 
Campania.  In  the  beginning  they  surpassed  the 
Italians  in  civilization  and  in  military  power. 


THE  FIGHT   WITHOUT   THE   CITY.          69 

2.  The  Italian  Races  of  Italy.— The  re- 
maining peoples  of  Italy — the  Umbrians,  Sabines, 
Volscians,  Oscans  or  Sabellians  (which  last  is  a 
name  of  convenience  for  the  Samnites  and  their  de- 
scendants), and  the  Latins — constitute  linguistical- 
ly so  many  branches  of  one  family.  The  languages 
of  the  first  four  of  these  races,  as  far  as  they  are 
known,  resemble  each  other  more  closely  than  they 
do  the  Latins',  from  whom  they  seem  to  have  sep- 
arated in  prehistoric  times.  These  four  are  in- 
cluded together  under  the  name  of  the  Umbro- 
Sabellians.  The  Umbrians  originally  occupied  the 
country  to  the  north  from  sea  to  sea,  but  had  been 
dispossessed  of  the  western  portion  by  the  Etrus- 
cans. In  the  fourth  century  before  Christ,  the  Se- 
nonian  Gauls  seized  another  strip  bordering  on  the 
Adriatic,  which  was  thenceforth  called  the  Ager 
Gallicus.  A  hint  about  the  structure  of  their  lan- 
guage is  given  us  by  the  so-called  Eugubine  Ta- 
bles. South  of  the  Umbrians,  in  the  mountains  of 
the  interior,  lived  the  Sabines,  from  whom  were  de- 
scended the  inhabitants  of  Picenum,  which  was  on 
the  sea-coast,  as  well  as  the  Vestini,  the  Marrucini, 
the  Marsi,  and  the  Peligni.  No  traces  of  their  lan- 
guage are  found,  except  in  the  Roman  grammari- 
ans. The  Volsci  dwelt  within  the  limits  of  what 
was  afterward  Latium,  as  did  the  ^Equi,  the  Ru- 
tuli,  the  Hernici,  and  the  Aurunci.  On  the  evi- 
dence of  inscriptions,  the  Volsci  are  closely  related 
to  the  Umbrians.  Concerning  the  languages  of  the 
others  nothing  is  known.  The  Samnites  held  the 
inland  country  to  the  northeast  of  Campania. 


70  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

Thence  their  descendants,  the  Frentani,  spread 
eastward  to  the  Adriatic.  In  the  fifth  century  be- 
fore Christ,  the  Samnites  conquered  Campania,  and 
during  the  next  half-century,  Lucania  and  the  Ager 
Bruttiorum.  When  Rome  began  its  struggle  with 
them  for  the  hegemony  of  Italy,  they  held  these  dis- 
tricts and  Apulia  besides..  Their  language  is  known 
by  us  through  inscriptions  discovered  in  Apulia, 
Campania,  and  Samnium. 

The  Latins  in  the  earliest  time  had  probably  held 
most  of  the  lowlands  from  the  Tiber  to  the  south- 
western extremity  of  the  peninsula.  From  Cumae 
southward,  their  nationality  had  succumbed  to  that 
of  the  Greeks,  who,  beginning  perhaps  in  the  eighth 
and  ninth  centuries  before  Christ,  took  possession 
of  the  Italian  coast  from  Cumse  as  far  as  Taren- 
tum.  At  the  dawn  of  their  history,  the  Latins  oc- 
cupied a  district  of  about  seven  hundred  square 
miles,  bounded  by  the  Tiber,  the  Apennines,  the 
Alban  hills,  and  the  sea. 

3.  The  Latin  League. — Among  the  clan- 
communities  composed  of  these  Latins  dwelling  in 
this  limited  territory,  there  had  existed  from  time  im- 
memorial a  confederation  which,  of  course,  included 
Rome.  The  basis  of  their  union  was  their  common 
language  and  religion,  and  it  was  designed  for  the 
purposes  of  defense  against  the  common  enemies 
of  Latium — the  Etruscans,  who  lived  toward  the 
north,  and  the  Umbro-Sabellians  of  the  mountains. 
This  was  the  so-called  "  Latin  League,"  in  which, 
according  to  tradition,  there  were  included  thirty 
cantons.  Alba  Longa  held  the  presidency,  and 


THE  FIGHT    WITHOUT   THE    CITY.          71 

there  an  annual  meeting  of  the  league  was  held 
when  the  Latin  games  (Latintz  f erics)  were  cele- 
brated, and  sacrifices  made  to  the  Latin  god  (Ju- 
piter  Latiaris).  Alba  Longa's  position  gave  it  no 
ruling  power  over  the  other  members  of  the  league. 
Each  canton  continued  absolutely  independent  in 
its  sovereign  rights,  while  the  league  was  capable  of 
common  action  in  its  own  name.  This,  together 
with  the  clan  and  the  canton,  makes  the  three  politi- 
cal units  of  early  Roman  history.  How  the  politi- 
cal power  of  the  clans  became  lost  in  that  of  the 
cantons  can  only  be  conjectured.  We  know  how 
the  league  grew  into  a  state,  because  we  know  how 
Rome  became  mistress  of  Latium. 

4.  The  Conquest  of  Italy. — None  of  the 
thirty  cantons  included  in  the  Latin  League  were 
among  those  of  her  neighbors  whom  Rome  re- 
duced when  she  first  essayed  extending  her  bor- 
ders by  conquest.  When  she  was  confident  of  her 
strength,  however,  she  took  Alba  Longa  and 
usurped  the  presidency  of  the  Latin  League.  This 
position,  as  has  bee|tsaid,  primarily  carried  with  it 
no  political  rights,  but  Rome's  growing  power  con- 
verted it  first  into  an  hegemony,  and  finally  into  a 
sovereignty  over  the  other  members  of  the  league. 
According  to  the  terms  of  an  alliance  for  offense 
and  defense,  which  was  made  between  Rome  on 
the  one  hand  and  the  Latin  cities,  which  were  not 
yet  subdued,  on  the  other,  each  party  was  to  bear 
equally  the  burdens  of  any  war  which  they  might 
wage  in  common,  and  to  share  equally  the  fruits  of 
victory.  Rome,  however,  soon  usurped  the  exclu- 


72  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

sive  right  of  declaring  war  and  making  peace  on 
behalf  of  the  league,  and  the  exclusive  command  of 
the  allied  forces,  and  divided  among  her  own  citi- 
zens the  lands  of  such  colonies  as  were  planted  in 
conquered  territory.  The  Latin  cities  submitted  to 
these  aggressions,  both  because  they  were  no  longer 
individually  a  match  for  Rome,  and  because  col- 
lectively they  needed  the  assistance  of  Rome  in 
their  struggles  against  their  enemies  in  Italy  and 
marauders  from  abroad.  With  powers  thus  propor- 
tioned, therefore,  Rome  and  the  Latin  League  be- 
gan a  series  of  successful  wars  against  the  Sabines 
on  the  east,  who  offered  no  serious  resistance,  and 
against  the  Volscians,  the  Hernicans  and  the 
^Equians,  who  lived  within  the  limits  of  Latium. 
By  383  B.  c.  they  had  extended  their  dominion  as 
far  as  the  river  Liris,  the  northern  border  of  Cam- 
pania, and  assured  their  position  by  planting  colo- 
nies which  served  as  fortresses  in  the  conquered 
country.  Up  to  this  time  the  Etruscans  and  the 
Greeks  were  the  strongest  people  in  Italy,  and 
there  are  indications  that,  at  the  close  of  the  regal 
period,  the  Etruscans  subjected  Rome  and  the 
Latins  to  a  crushing  defeat,  and  that  this  was  fol- 
lowed by  a  short  period  during  which  Latium  was, 
to  some  extent  at  any  rate,  under  Etruscan  domina- 
tion. In  the  fourth  century  before  Christ,  how- 
ever, the  Etruscan  power  was  materially  weakened 
by  the  invasion  of  the  Gauls  and  by  wars  which  it 
carried  on  with  the  Syracusans  and  the  Samnites. 
Etruria  and  the  cities  of  Magna  Grsecia  began, 
also,  thus  early  to  pay  the  penalty  of  their  great 


THE  FIGHT    WITHOUT   THE   CITY.          73 

prosperity,  in  the  degeneracy  of  the  national  char- 
acter which  accompanied  the  spread  of  luxury. 

5.  The  Conquest  of  Italy  (continued}.— As 
has  already  been  said,  the  Campanians  were  Sam- 
nites  by  race,  but  they  had  lost  sight  of  their  de- 
scent, and  were  engaged  in  frequent  wars  with  the 
Samnites  of  the  mountains.  In  343  B.  c.,  during 
one  of  these  wars,  the  Capuans  offered  to  place 
their  city  under  the  control  of  Rome  in  exchange 
for  aid  against  their  enemies.  Capua  was  at  this 
time  the  second  city  of  Italy  in  size  and  the  first 
in  wealth.  When  Rome  accepted  its  proposition, 
the  Latin  towns  broke  into  revolt.  Roman  ag- 
gression and  the  increased  security  of  Latium  had 
already  weakened  the  bonds  which  held  together 
Rome  and  the  Latin  League,  and  at  least  once  be- 
fore its  members  had  taken  up  arms  against  the 
city.  Now,  when  they  became  satisfied  that  Rome 
was  about  to  enter  upon  an  individual  career  of 
foreign  conquest,  and  that  this  would  increase  her 
power  out  of  all  proportion  to  theirs,  they  united 
in  a  final  effort  to  preserve  their  independence. 
Rome,  however,  gained  the  victory  now  as  she  had 
before.  In  338  B.  c.  she  dissolved  the  Latin  League, 
and,  with  the  design  of  isolating  the  Latin  communi- 
ties from  each  other,  made  individual  treaties  with 
them.  By  326  B.  c.  she  had  completed  the  sub- 
jugation of  Campania  which  she  had  begun  when 
she  occupied  Capua,  and  here,  as  elsewhere,  she 
confirmed  her  conquests  by  colonies.  The  Roman 
dominion  now  included  the  southern  part  of  Etru- 
ria,  which  she  had  won  soon  after  the  Gallic  inva- 
4 


74  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

sion,  Latium,  Campania,  and  the  Sabine  country. 
All  this  was  compacted  into  a  strong  and  highly 
centralized  empire  with  Rome  at  its  head.  B.  c.  326 
may  be  taken  as  the  date  when  the  Samnites  began 
their  great  contest  with  this  power  for  the  hegemo- 
ny of  Italy.  The  extent  of  the  Samnite  territory 
at  this  time  has  already  been  given.  In  the  wars 
which  followed,  all  the  nations  of  Italy,  with  the 
exception  of  the  Greeks,  were  arrayed  at  one  time 
or  another  against  Rome,  and  when  Rome  tri- 
umphed, in  290  B.  c.,  they  all  came  under  her  power. 
In  280  B.  c.,  Tarentum,  in  behalf  of  the  Greek  cit- 
ies, called  in  the  aid  of  Pyrrhus,  King  of  Epirus, 
against  the  Romans.  By  272  B.  c.  he  had  been  de- 
feated, Tarentum  subdued,  and  Rome  was  mistress 
of  Italy  south  of  the  Rubicon. 

6.  The  Greatness  of  Rome.— The  details  of 
this  very  remarkable  career  of  conquest  have  not 
been  preserved  to  us  in  a  shape  which  makes  them 
easy  or  worthy  of  study.  But  a  brief  outline  of  the 
successive  steps  such  as  we  have  presented  is  val- 
uable, both  because  it  shows  that  the  Romans  must 
have  been  possessed  of  military  skill  and  a  capacity 
for  governing  of  the  highest  order,  and  because  it 
allows  us  to  see  by  what  agencies  these  qualities 
were  developed  to  their  perfection.  There  is  no 
reason  in  the  nature  of  things  why  the  people  of 
the  town  on  the  Tiber  should  have  triumphed  first 
over  their  neighbors  in  the  lowlands  and  afterward 
over  all  Italy  ;  and,  when  we  sum  up  the  advan- 
tages of  its  situation  on  the  one  side  and  its  disad- 
vantages on  the  other,  they  seem  to  neutralize  each 


THE  FIGHT    WITHOUT   THE   CITY.          75 

other  in  a  way  which  makes  inferences  quite  impos- 
sible. Rome  was  built  on  a  group  of  seven  hills, 
and  it  was  easier  to  fortify  and  defend  such  a  posi- 
tion than  the  single  hill  on  which  most  of  the  can- 
tons about  her  had  their  citadels.  But  when  she 
came  to  fight  with  the  men  of  the  mountains,  like 
the  Volscians  and  the  ^Equians  and  the  Hernicans, 
her  hundred  or  two  feet  of  elevation  above  the 
level  of  the  sea  could  not  have  counted  for  much 
in  the  contest.  Her  victory  here  and  always  must 
have  been  won  because  she  was  superior  to  her 
enemies  in  discipline,  in  perseverance,  and  in  alert- 
ness. When  once  she  had  conquered  them,  more- 
over, she  was  able  to  attach  them  to  herself  and 
to  hold  them  as  part  of  her  in  a  way  that  no 
other  conquering  power  has  ever  done.  In  the 
case  of  those  in  her  immediate  neighborhood,  the 
reason  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  intelligence 
and  fairness  of  her  laws  which  made  even  partial 
rights  of  citizenship  at  Rome  a  prize  worth  striv- 
ing for.  And  she  secured  the  allegiance  of  those 
at  a  distance,  because  somehow  she  possessed  the 
instinct  of  ruling  with  strength  and  justice  such 
as  to  discourage  revolt.  Her  capacities  in  these 
directions  continued  great  through  all  her  history. 
At  the  height  of  her  power  she  was  great  in  these 
three  things :  in  her  military  system,  her  laws,  and 
her  government.  The  armies  of  the  civilized  and 
the  barbarian  .world  alike  succumbed  before  her 
advance,  as  had  the  nations  of  Italy  in  these  early 
years,  and  she  consolidated  her  vast  empire  by 
such  devices  that  its  permanency  was  never  threat- 


76  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

ened  from  within,  and  men  forgot  that  they  were 
Greeks  or  Gauls  in  the  intensity  of  their  devo- 
tion and  loyalty  to  Rome  as  Romans.  It  is  quite 
idle  to  speculate  as  to  what  it  was  which  gave 
the  Romans  the  pre-eminence  over  their  neighbors 
in  these  qualities  at  the  beginning,  but  these  early 
wars  and  dealings  with  kinsmen  and  strangers 
around  her,  which  we  have  recited,  developed  the 
powers  of  her  people  in  all  the  lines  where  their 
strength  lay.  We  can  never  hope  to  know  how 
their  strength  came  to  lie  in  these  directions,  but 
the  city's  career  gave  them  experience,  and  prob- 
lems to  solve,  and  the  methods  which  they  learned 
here  were  valuable  when  the  field  of  their  applica- 
tion became  the  world. 

7.  What  Rome  learned  in  these  Wars.— 
Rome's  early  intercourse  with  her  neighbors,  for 
one  thing,  counted  for  much  in  the  development 
of  her  legal  system.  Roman  law  is  the  proudest 
monument  which  is  standing  in  our  time  to  testify 
to  the  city's  greatness.  The  judicial  methods  and 
principles  of  all  the  civilized  nations  of  to-day  are 
permeated  through  and  through  by  ideas  borrowed 
from  Rome.  A  structure  like  this,  which  is  to  stand 
forever,  was  built  slowly  and  by  many  hands.  In 
the  beginning,  the  city's  commercial  position  must 
have  given  her  a  high  appreciation  of  the  value  of 
law.  A  commercial  people  early  acquire  a  regard 
for  justice  because  they  see  that  it  pays.  Men  who 
trade  and  loan  money  profit,  for  example,  by  the 
enforcement  of  contracts.  But  law  and  justice 
are  nowhere  always  the  same,  and  in  a  primitive 


THE  FIGHT    WITHOUT  THE   CITY.          77 

community  are  very  different  indeed.  We  have 
already  defined  early  law  as  a  body  of  customs 
which  have  grown  out  of  the  decisions  of  chieftains 
on  disputes  submitted  to  them  by  their  subjects. 
Its  substance  is  custom,  and  justice  is  only  its  col- 
oring. Before  the  local  customs  of  Rome,  however, 
had  lost  their  flexibility  so  that  they  could  not  be 
altered,  the  city  was  thrown  into  intimate  contact 
by  commerce  and  war  with  people  whose  customs 
differed  from  hers.  When  she  tried  to  meet  them 
in  a  legal  way,  she  had  to  throw  aside  much  of 
what  was  arbitrary  and  peculiar  in  her  own  meth- 
ods. Her  customs  and  theirs,  in  as  far  as  they 
were  accidental,  had  in  general  nothing  in  common, 
but,  in  as  far  as  they  were  embodiments  of  intelli- 
gence and  justice,  they  coincided,  because  intelli- 
gence and  justice  are  alike  everywhere.  In  the 
attrition  of  their  mutual  dealings,  therefore,  the 
senseless  formalism  which  characterizes  most  .sys- 
tems of  early  law  was  reduced,  and  a  prominence 
given  to  simple  principles  of  equity  which  are  usu- 
ally a  quite  subordinate  element. 

8.  What  Rome  learned  in  these  Wars 
(continued}. — Rome  also  learned  the  rudiments  of 
her  subsequent  skill  as  a  ruling  and  consolidating 
power  in  her  dealings  with  the  subjugated  Latins, 
and  in  the  country  of  the  Volscians  and  ^Equians 
she  founded  her  first  military  colonies  which  were 
to  be  fortresses  to  hold  what  she  had  won.  This 
was  the  germ  of  her  colonial  system,  by  which  she 
subsequently  governed  all  Italy  and  finally  the 
world.  But,  even  with  this  device,  she  could  never 


78  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

have  ruled  with  success  the  vast  empire  which  she 
constructed,  unless  she  had  been  willing  to  leave 
the  administration  of  local  affairs  in  each  com- 
munity to  the  local  authorities.  Rome,  later  in  her 
history,  became  rapacious  and  extortionate  in  her 
treatment  of  her  provinces,  but  she  never  inter- 
fered heedlessly  with  local  institutions  or  supersti- 
tions. This  is  quite  remarkable,  because  most  con- 
quering nations  have  tried  to  make  proselytes  of 
the  conquered  by  force  or  persuasion.  Rome, 
however,  was  tolerant  of  other  peoples'  customs 
and  beliefs  from  the  beginning,  and  one  of  the 
reasons  was  because  she  had  never  been  isolated. 
Isolation  makes  men  and  nations  unsympathetic, 
but  Rome  had  been  very  familiar,  before  she  be- 
came settled  in  her  own  ways,  with  the  political 
and  religious  systems  of  the  peoples  which  sur- 
rounded her.  Those  of  the  mountaineers  must 
have  borne  a  resemblance  to  hers,  because  she  and 
they  were  of  the  same  race,  but  with  the  Etruscans 
on  the  north  it  was  very  different.  Their  religion, 
for  one  thing,  was  a  gloomy  and  cruel  mysticism, 
very  foreign  to  the  practical  common  sense  of  the 
Romans.  The  knowledge  that  a  great  commercial 
nation  like  the  Etruscans  held  such  ideas,  must  have 
accustomed  the  Romans  to  strange  things.  Of 
course,  this  sort  of  experience  was  only  one  of 
many  factors  in  the  city's  discipline,  but  it  had  its 
influence,  as  will  appear  when  we  consider  in  detail 
how  Rome  governed  Italy. 

9.  The  Policy  of  Incorporation.  —  Rome's 
policy  at  the  beginning  of  her  power  was  to  in- 


THE  FIGHT    WITHOUT  THE   CITY.          79 

crease  the  number  of  her  citizens  in  whatever 
ways  she  could.  For  this  reason,  she  incorporated 
the  inhabitants  of  the  cantons  which  she  first  con- 
quered, in  the  body  of  Romans  as  plebeians. 
Afterward,  as  treaties  or  conquest  gave  her  op- 
portunity, she  did  the  same  thing  with  the  rest  of 
the  peoples  in  her  vicinity,  until  most  of  the  towns 
in  the  district  bounded  on  the  north  by  Caere,  on 
the  east  by  the  Apennines,  and  on  the  south  by 
the  Formioe,  had  become  suburbs,  as  it  were,  of 
the  Roman  city.  So  long  as  the  plebeians  were 
denied  their  political  rights,  this  incorporation  was 
not  looked  on  as  a  privilege  ly  those  who  were 
forced  to  submit  to  it,  because  it  made  them  a  sub- 
ject population  in  a  foreign  state.  Before  the  time 
of  the  second  Punic  war,  as  we  shall  presently  see, 
the  plebeians  had  gained  for  themselves  political 
equality,  so  that  thenceforward  all  Romans  in  the 
region  indicated,  and  previous  to  that,  the  patricians 
among  them,  were  citizens  with  full  rights.  This 
territory  was  divided  into  tribes,  which  were  made 
up  after  the  analogy  of  the  three  original  tribes 
from  which  the  city  had  been  formed.  The  num- 
ber of  these  was  increased  as  the  limits  of  the  incor- 
porated territory  were  extended,  until  by  241  B.  c. 
there  were  thirty-five.  Four  of  them  included  the 
inhabitants  of  the  city  proper,  and  the  other  thirty- 
one  those  of  the  adjacent  country.  These  tribes,  as' 
will  be  further  noted,  were  entirely  artificial  organi- 
zations, made  for  convenience  of  governmental  ad- 
ministration, and  their  members  had  no  necessary 
relation  to  one  another,  either  of  blood  or  of  com- 


8o  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

mon  religion.  Any  man  who  was  enrolled  in  any 
one  of  them  had  the  right  of  going  to  Rome,  in 
case  he  did  not  already  live  there,  and  of  voting  in 
the  popular  assemblies  to  which  his  rank  admitted 
him  (jus  suffragi).  He  had  also  the  right  of  hold- 
ing political  offices  in  the  state  (jus  honoruni),  and 
the  right  of  appealing  to  the  people  from  any  sen- 
tence which  affected  his  life  or  his  privileges  as  a 
citizen  (jus  provocationis).  These  were  his  public 
rights.  He  had  also  the  private  rights,  the  jus 
comment  and  the  jus  connubi,  which  have  been  de- 
fined in  another  connection.  Those  who  possessed 
thus  both  the  public  and  private  rights  constituted 
the  Romans  proper,  and  in  their  hands  during  the 
continuance  of  the  republic  rested  the  government 
of  the  state. 

10.  The  Subject  Communities  of  Italy.— The 
subject  communities  in  Italy — and  there  were  none 
outside  of  Italy  at  this  time — were  of  three  classes. 
The  first  and  most  important  were  those  which  had 
the  so-called  Latin  rights  (jus  Lati  or  Latinitas). 
Here  were  included  some  Latin  towns  like  Tibur 
and  Praeneste,  which  Rome  had  not  been  strong 
enough  to  subject  to  incorporation,  three  Hernican 
towns  whose  faithfulness  to  Rome  had  been  so  un- 
interrupted that  they  had  afforded  no  pretext  for 
their  incorporation,  and  the  colonies  which  the  city 
had  planted  as  fortresses  throughout  the  peninsula. 
The  inhabitants  of  all  these  possessed  the  jus  com- 
merci)  but  generally  not  the  jus  connubi,  and  in  the 
beginning  the  public  rights  were  open  to  them 
under  certain  restrictions,  provided  they  migrated 


THE  FIGHT    WITHOUT   THE    CITY.         81 

to  Rome  ;  but  in  the  case  of  those  colonies  which 
were  founded  after  268  B.  c.,  only  the  men  who  had 
held  public  magistracies  in  their  own  towns,  ac- 
quired citizenship  by  settlement  in  the  city.  This 
class  of  subject  communities  enjoyed  local  self- 
government,  and  from  it  was  drawn  the  main  body 
of  allies  for  the  Roman  army,  known  as  "the  allies 
of  the  Latin  name  "  (nomen  Latinum}.  The  second 
class  consisted  of  the  so-called  prefectures.  These 
were  some  towns,  like  Caere  in  Etruria  and  Capua 
in  Campania,  whose  distance  from  Rome  was  too 
great  to  warrant  their  incorporation  in  the  city, 
and  whose  subjugation  at  the  same  time  was  too 
complete  to  win  for  them  a  place  in  the  nomen 
Latinum.  Their  inhabitants  were  called  cives  sine 
suffragio,  because,  while  they  possessed  the  private, 
they  were  denied  absolutely  the  public  rights. 
They  were  subject,  however,  to  all  the  burdens  of 
Roman  citizenship,  and  their  local  law  was  admin- 
istered by  prefects  sent  out  from  Rome.  They 
occupied  the  least  desirable  position  in  the  state. 
The  third  class  included  the  Greek,  Etruscan,  and 
Umbro  -  Sabellian  communities  throughout  Italy, 
which  had  been  forced  into  treaties  of  perpetual 
alliance  with  Rome  during  the  course  of  the  long 
wars  which  she  had  waged  for  supremacy  in  the 
peninsula.  The  terms  of  these  treaties  varied  with 
each  community,  but  in  general  they  were  as  liberal 
as  was  consistent  with  the  position  of  the  central 
city.  Rome  reserved  to  herself  exclusively  three 
functions  only — declaring  war,  making  treaties,  and 
coining  money.  Local  self-government  was  granted 


82  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

the  allies,  and  exemption  from  direct  taxation.  All 
that  was  demanded  of  them  was  that  they  should 
each  supply  a  fixed  contingent  to  fight  along  with 
the  Romans  against  the  enemies  of  Italy. 

ii.  Rome's  Colonial  System. — As  far  as  the 
outside  world  was  concerned,  Italy  was  thus  made 
one  nation.  Internally  it  was  a  compact  confed- 
eracy, all  the  lines  of  which  radiated  from  Rome  as 
a  center.  The  policy  of  incorporation  had  been  pur- 
sued as  far  as  was  possible  if  Rome  was  to  continue 
a  city.  Beyond  this,  the  more  remote  communities, 
isolated  politically  from  each  other,  were  united  to 
the  capital  as  individuals.  At  the  same  time,  Rome 
devoted  herself  earnestly  and  successfully  to  as- 
similating them  to  herself  in  their  internal  customs 
and  institutions.  The  chief  agents  in  this  work 
were  the  Latin  colonies,  to  which  reference  has 
already  been  made.  These  were  called  Latin,  not 
because  they  were  peopled  by  Latins,  but  because 
their  inhabitants  had  the  Latin  rights  {jus  Lati). 
They  ultimately  numbered  thirty-four,  and  were 
situated  in  all  parts  of  the  peninsula,  from  Arimi- 
num  in  the  country  of  the  Gauls,  to  Brundisium  in 
Calabria,  and  from  Cales  in  Campania,  on  the  west, 
to  Firmum  and  Castrum  Novum  in  Picenum  on  the 
east.  Bodies  of  colonists  were  sent  to  them  from 
Rome,  varying  in  size  according  to  the  necessities 
of  the  regions  in  which  they  were  founded.  Four 
or  five  thousand  was  the  usual  number,  but,  at  least 
in  one  instance,  as  many  as  twenty  thousand  were 
sent.  These  colonists  were  Roman  citizen^  who 
were  willing  to  suffer  a  diminution  in  their  political 


THE  FIGHT    WITHOUT   THE   CITY.         83 

rights  in  return  for  the  material  advantages  which* 
they  got  from  residence  in  these  subject  communi- 
ties. They  retained  in  their  new  homes  their  loy- 
alty to  Rome  and  the  moral  qualities  which  be- 
longed to  the  Romans.  Through  their  work  the 
Italian  dialects  gave  way  to  the  Latin  language, 
until  Latin  became  the  common  Italian  tongue. 
Through  their  presence,  also,  the  Italian  cities 
learned  to  model -their  governments  after  the  pat- 
tern of  Rome.  At  the  same  time,  with  their  strong 
walls  the  colonies  served  admirably  their  original 
purpose  of  holding  in  subjection  the  conquered 
country. 

12.  The  Roman  Roads. — Beginning  in  312 
B.  c.,  the  Romans  undertook  to  facilitate  communi- 
cation between  Rome  and  the  different  parts  of 
Italy  by  a  system  of  military  roads.  The  first  of 
these,  called  the  Via  Appia,  was  built  soon  after 
the  subjugation  of  Campania,  and  extended  first  to 
Capua,  whence  it  was  afterward  continued  through 
Venusia  and  Tarentum  to  Brundisium.  Of  the  rriany 
others  which  were  subsequently  constructed,  it  is 
important  to  know  about  the  Via  Flaminia,  which 
was  built  by  220  B.  c.,  and,  passing  through  Narnia 
and  Fanum,  terminated  at  Ariminum  ;  about  the 
Via  ^Emilia  (B.  c.  187),  which  connected  Ariminum 
with  Placentia;  about  the  Via  Valeria,  which  led 
through  the  country  of  the  Sabines,  Marsians,  and 
^Equians  ;  and  about  the  Via  Latina,  which  led 
through  the  valley  of  the  Liris  to  y^Esernia  in  Sam- 
nium.  These  roads  were,  for  the  most  part,  paved 
with  blocks  of  hard  stone  placed  above  a  foundation 


84  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

two  feet  deep,  and  consisting  of  small  stones  and 
gravel.  They  were  eighteen  feet  in  width,  and  were 
raised  a  little  in  the  middle  for  the  purpose  of  drain- 
age. They  were  constructed  with  the  greatest  care, 
and,  in  general,  followed  a  straight  line  between  the 
points  which  they  connected.  Mountains  which 
stood  in  the  way  were  penetrated  by  tunnels, 
streams  were  spanned  by  bridges,  and  marshes  were 
crossed  by  viaducts  of  solid  masonry.  Over  them 
it  was  possible  to  send  a  Roman  army  without  any 
delay  from  difficulties  of  travel.  Thus  they  served 
at  once  to  further  the  work  of  assimilating  Italy  to 
Rome  by  spreading  Roman  ideas  and  to  discourage 
anything  like  a  concerted  revolt  on  the  part  of  the 
Italians.  Of  this  last,  however,  there  was  no  longer 
ground  for  fear.  The  Umbro-Sabellians  had  not 
yielded  in  their  long  struggle  with  Rome  until  their 
strength  had  been  completely  crushed.  For  them 
to  take  up  arms  against  Rome,  with  its  power  grown 
and  consolidated  as  has  been  described,  would 
have  been  hopeless.  In  point  of  fact,  they  served 
faithfully  in  the  united  armies,  making  the  number 
of  men  in  Italy  capable  of  bearing  arms  probably 
not  much  less  than  a  million.  It  was  a  nation  of 
this  character  which  Hannibal  tried  to  conquer  with 
an  army  of  twenty  thousand  foot  and  six  thousand 
horse. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

THE    FIGHT    WITHIN    THE    CITY. 

i.  Primitive   Ideas  about  Property.  —  In 

primitive  society,  the  right  of  the  individual  to  own 
land  was  not  recognized.  The  earliest  stage  of 
civilization  was  the  pastoral,  and  then,  of  course, 
men  moved  from  place  to  place  as  their  flocks  and 
herds  needed  pasture  and  water.  When  they  be- 
gan to  till  the  soil,  since  land  was  plenty  and  the 
laborers  few,  the  site  of  their  settlement  was  con- 
stantly shifted,  and  they  brought  rich  new  fields 
under  cultivation  after  each  harvest  to  take  the 
place  of  those  impaired  by  use.  It  was  clearly 
quite  inconsistent  with  either  of  these  systems  that 
an  individual  should  hold  as  his  own  any  particular 
section  of  land  to  the  exclusion  of  his  fellows.  In 
the  pastoral  stage,  no  thought  was  given  to  the  soil 
except  for  the  grass  which  grew  on  it,  and  even 
when  agriculture  had  become  a  common  pursuit 
among  men,  the  crop  was  the  great  thing — the  land 
was  boundless  and  anybody's.  The  methods  in- 
herited from  these  times  continued  after  the  com- 
munity had  abandoned  the  nomadic  life  in  all  its 
forms,  and  settled  once  for  all  in  a  limited  and  cir- 
cumscribed territory.  The  arable  fields  were  culti- 


86  ROMAN-  CONSTITUTION'. 

vated  in  common  by  all  the  citizens,  and  the  har- 
vested crops  divided  among  the  laborers  man  by 
man.  The  waste  land  was  held  as  pasture,  and  here 
was  the  general  grazing-ground  for  all  the  flocks 
and  herds  owned  in  the  community.  When  the 
population  increased  by  natural  means  and  by  the 
combination  of  clans,  parts  of  this  system  were  out- 
grown. Sections  of  the  arable  domain  were  then 
assigned  to  families.  These  they  were  to  cultivate 
in  common,  as  the  community  had  cultivated  the 
whole  at  the  beginning.  This  land  was  not  regarded 
as  the  property  of  the  family  to  which  it  was  given, 
but  was  theirs  simply  to  use,  and  that,  too,  for  a  lim- 
ited period.  At  fixed  intervals  they  were  required 
to  turn  it  into  the  common  stock  for  redistribution. 
2.  The  Land  System  of  the  Romans. — At 
the  dawn  of  Roman  history,  all  of  these  stages  had 
already  been  passed  through,  and  the  right  of  pri- 
vate ownership  in  real  estate  was  well  established. 
We  can  picture  the  community  at  the  outset  as  liv- 
ing under  a  common  roof,  but  now  every  pater  fa- 
milias  owned  in  fee  a  small  piece  of  land  (herediutn) 
around  the  family  tomb,  large  enough  for  his  house 
and  garden.  He  could  neither  sell  nor  devise  this, 
because  it  had  originally  come  to  him  as  a  tempo- 
rary grant  from  the  state,  and  because  it  was  sacred 
as  the  site  of  the  family's  altar.  As  families  en- 
larged and  divided,  each  new  pater  familias  was 
given  a  similar  heredium  out  of  the  community's 
domain.  This  was  not  exactly  the  same  thing  as 
owning  land,  but  it  accustomed  men's  minds  to  the 
idea  that  there  might  be  the  same  sort  of  property 


THE  FIGHT    WITHIN   THE   CITY.  87 

in  the  soil  as  there  was  in  other  things.  The  here- 
dium,  however,  was  of  course  not  sufficient  for  the 
support  of  the  family,  and  the  main  reliance  must 
still  have  been  on  the  common  property  of  the  state, 
which  was  farmed  out  to  the  citizens  for  limited 
periods.  The  state  finally  failed,  from  one  cause  or 
another,  to  reclaim  the  land  which  had  been  assigned 
for  occupation,  until  each  occupant  came  to  view 
that  which  he  held  as  his  own.  When  he  was  al- 
lowed to  alienate  this  during  his  life  and  to  dis- 
pose of  it  at  his  death  by  will,  all  the  features  of 
the  modern  systems  of  land  tenure  appeared  at 
Rome.  The  details  of  this  transition  are  entirely 
unknown  to  us,  but,  if  the  traditions  about  the  clas- 
sification of  the  people  by  Servius  Tullius  on  the 
basis  of  their  property  have  any  foundation  in  fact, 
individual  ownership  of  land  must  have  been  very 
general  at  Rome  at  a  very  early  time. 

3.  The  Lands  acquired  in  War.  —  The 
state's  domain,  however,  was  constantly  extending 
along  with  its  success  in  war.  In  primitive  times, 
after  a  military  victory,  the  discipline  of  the  army 
was  suspended,  the  soldiers  were  dismissed  from 
the  ranks  with  free  license  to  plunder  the  enemy, 
and  the  movable  property  of  the  conquered  became 
the  spoil  of  the  victor  to  seize  and  carry  off  at  his 
will.  By  an  extension  of  this  custom,  when  Rome 
subdued  a  state,  she  not  only  succeeded  at  once  to 
the  possession  of  its  public  works,  treasures,  and 
revenues,  but  also  became  absolute  owner  of  the 
land  which  had  belonged  to  its  inhabitants  in  sev- 
eralty,  so  far  as  this  system  prevailed.  The  severity 


88  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

with  which  she  exercised  this  power  varied  with 
the  completeness  of  her  victory  and  the  objects 
which  she  had  in  view.  But,  in  general,  she  granted 
back  part  of  the  territory  which  she  thus  acquired 
to  the  men  from  whom  she  had  taken  it.  The  rest 
of  it  was  hers,  and  she  had  to  make  some  disposi- 
tion of  it.  In  the  earliest  time,  we  can  conceive  of 
her  as  holding  it  for  the  common  use  of  her  citizens, 
and,  later,  as  renting  it  for  a  nominal  sum  or  par- 
celing it  out  to  them  in  fee.  When  the  plebeians 
.began  to  fight  in  the  armies,  it  became  the  custom 
to  assign  that  part  of  the  conquered  land  which  was 
arable  in  equal  portions  to  the  men  who  had  won  it 
with  their  arms,  citizens  and  non-citizens,  to  hold 
as  their  individual  property.  That  which  was  not 
arable  was  reserved  as  a  common  pasture-ground, 
for  the  use  of  which  a  small  grazing-tax  was  exacted. 
Strictly  the  patricians  alone,  from  the  beginning, 
enjoyed  this  privilege  of  pasturing  their  cattle  on 
the  state's  land;  but,  while  the  regal  constitution 
continued,  the  royal  indulgence  had  extended  it  to 
the  plebeians  also.  This  was  because,  in  the  in- 
evitable struggles  between  the  sovereign  and  the 
aristocracy,  which  occur  in  every  absolute  mon- 
archy, the  Roman  kings  had  found  the //^valu- 
able allies,  and  there  is  more  than  one  trustworthy 
tradition  that  they  had  tried  to  bring  them  within 
the  pale  of  political  privileges  in  return  for  their 
support. 

4.  The  State's  Lands  under  the  Consular 
Government. — But  when  the  rule  of  the  aristoc- 
racy began,  on  the  expulsion  of  the  kings,  the  pie- 


THE  FIGHT   WITHIN   THE   CITY.  89 

beians  lost  whatever  had  thus  been  secured  to  them. 
The  patricians  became  in  deed  as  well  as  in  name 
the  exclusive  tenants  of  the  common  pasture- 
grounds.  At  the  same  time,  the  divisions  of  the 
arable  land,  in  which  all  the  warriors  had  shared, 
were  abandoned  for  the  most  part,  and  in  their 
place  was  revived  the  primitive  system  of  distribu- 
tion (pccupatio),  which  had  been  in  use  when  the 
plebeians  were  but  a  small  factor  in  the  state.  By 
this  the  state  henceforth  retained  the  ownership  of 
the  arable,  as  it  had  of  the  pasture  lands  in  the 
past ;  and,  in  return  for  a  fixed  annual  rental, 
granted  them  in  portions  to  individuals  to  hold  and 
transmit  to  their  heirs,  subject  always  to  the  right 
of  the  state  to  resume  possession  at  its  pleasure. 
This  change  in  the  disposition  of  the  public  lands 
began  at  once  to  work  mischief,  and  finally  led  to 
all  the  agrarian  troubles  which  wrecked  the  Roman 
state.  At  the  very  outset,  the  partiality  of  the 
magistrates,  who  had  charge  of  the  distribution, 
limited  it  to  their  immediate  circle  of  patricians 
and  rich  plebeians.  Again,  the  collection  of  the 
rentals,  as  well  as  of  the  grazing-tax,  devolved  on 
the  quaestors.  But  they  were  patricians,  appointed 
to  office  by  the  consuls,  who,  in  turn,  were  elected 
in  the  comitia  centuriata,  where  wealth  held  the 
power.  Naturally  enough,  therefore,  out  of  de- 
votion to  their  caste,  they  were  negligent  in  this 
part  of  their  duty,  until  these  rents  soon  ceased  to 
be  paid  at  all,  and  the  occupation  of  the  arable 
lands  came  to  differ  from  their  ownership  only  in 
name.  Finally,  the  revenues  of  the  state,  which 


9o  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

would  have  been  fully  adequate  had  this  source  of 
income  been  available,  fell  so  far  short  of  its  needs 
that  it  was  necessary  to  resort  constantly  to  the 
imposition  of  the  tributum  to  supply  the  deficiency. 
But  all  the  freeholders  had  been  made  subject  to 
this  by  the  Servian  constitution. 

5.  The  Early  Agrarian  Troubles.— The 
poor  land-holders  were  in  this  way  subjected  to  the 
burdens  of  increased  taxation,  while,  at  the  same 
time,  their  incomes  were  diminished  by  the  com- 
petition of  the  large  farms  of  the  patricians,  which 
already  began  to  be  worked  by  gangs  of  slaves.  No 
small  part  of  them,  too,  were  tenants  of  the  rich. 
Some  were  hereditary  clients,  whose  whole  stock  in 
trade  was  derived  from  their  patrons.  Some,  who 
belonged  to  the  other  classes  of  plebeians,  had  been 
forced  to  lease  property  from  the  owners  of  large 
estates,  because  they  could  get  none  for  themselves 
from  the  state  by  way  of  assignment  or  of  occupa- 
tion. But  all  of  these  had  rents  to  meet,  for  which 
the  returns  from  their  farms  were  now  often  inade- 
quate. The  poor,  who  were  largely  plebeians,  be- 
came thus  the  debtors  of  the  rich — the  freeholders, 
for  money  borrowed,  and  the  tenants  because  they 
could  not  discharge  their  obligations  to  them.  But 
in  ancient  Rome  the  creditor  looked  for  his  debt 
to  the  person  of  his  debtor,  not  to  his  property.  If 
the  debtor  failed  to  p^ay  what  he  owed  on  the  day 
appointed,  he  was  seized  and  confined  for  sixty 
days.  If  at  the  end  of  that  time  no  one  had  come 
to  his  rescue,  he  could  be  sold  into  slavery,  or  put 
to  death,  at  the  option  of  his  creditors.  It  is  obvi- 


THE  FIGHT    WITHIN   THE   CITY.  gi 

ous  that  a  plebeian,  when  he  had  once  become  in- 
volved in  debt,  would  find  it  very  difficult  to  save 
himself  from  these  extreme  consequences ;  and,  in 
point  of  fact,  the  traditions  from  this  period  tell  us 
that  the  poor  plebeians  passed  in  large  numbers 
into  bondage  to  their  wealthy  fellow-citizens.  It 
was  along  this  line  that  the  next  great  battle  in 
Rome's  constitutional  development  was  fought. 
While,  without,  the  field  was  Italy  and  Roman  arms 
were  victorious  in  every  quarter,  within,  the  lines 
were  closely  drawn  for  a  conflict  of  another  nature. 
It  is  important  to  notice  that  the  combatants  were 
not  the  patricians  and  the  plebeians,  but  the  rich 
on  the  one  side  against  the  poor  on  the  other.  The 
subject  of  dispute  was  not  an  abstract  question  of 
political  rights,  but  it  concerned  the  material  inter- 
ests and  physical  comfort  of  the  commonalty.  It 
was  only  because  these  would  be  furthered  by  the 
political  equality  of  the  two  orders  in  the  state  that 
they  aimed  at  this. 

6.  The  Tribunes  of  the  Plebs.— The  first 
movement  in  the  struggle  was  the  secession  of  the 
plebs  to  the  Sacred  Mount  in  494  B.  c.,  and  the 
consequent  institution  of  the  plebeian  tribuneship. 
Two  new  officers  were  thus  created  in  the  state  who 
were  to  be  elected  by  the  plebeians  in  an  assembly 
by  curice.  Like  the  consuls  they  held  office  for  a 
year  only,  but  their  power  was  of  the  most  unusual 
and  extensive  character.  The  general  object  of 
their  appointment  was  that  the  plebeians  might  find 
in  them  protectors  against  the  rapacity  and  injustice 
of  their  oppressors.  For  this  purpose,  they  were 
9 


92  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

empowered  to  interfere  with  any  magistrate  in  the 
discharge  of  the  duties  of  his  office  where  the  inter- 
est of  any  individual  plebeian  was  concerned.  They 
could,  for  example,  save  a  citizen  from  the  military 
levy,  or  rescue  an  insolvent  debtor  from  the  hands 
of  his  creditors.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  they  were 
powerless  against  the  imperium  of  the  consul,  when 
outside  the  city  at  the  head  of  his  army,  and  against 
that  of  the  dictator  both  within  and  without  the 
city.  Nor  could  they,  in  the  beginning,  veto  any 
legislative  or  judicial  act  as  a  whole,  but  they  were 
limited  to  securing  exemption  for  individuals  from 
its  operation.  Wider  powers  in  this  respect  were 
afterward  obtained  for  them,  but  this  restriction  at 
the  outset  made  the  work  of  their  office  too  great 
for  two  men  to  discharge,  and  their  number  was 
early  increased  to  five,  and  afterward  to  ten.  There 
was  the  more  need  for  this  change,  because  they  had 
added  to  their  original  functions  a  jurisdiction  in 
judicial  proceedings.  This  seems  to  have  been  a 
pure  usurpation  on  their  part,  but  it  soon  became 
one  of  the  most  considerable  of  their  duties,  in  the 
discharge  of  which  they  were  assisted  by  two  new 
officers,  the  plebeian  czdiles. 

7.  The  Concilium  Tributum  Plebis.— An 
appeal  was  granted  from  any  sentence  pronounced 
by  a  tribune,  in  his  capacity  of  judge,  to  the  curiate 
assembly  of  plebeians  which  had  elected  him,  just  as 
an  appeal  from  the  consul's  decision  was  had  to  the 
people  in  the  comitia  centuriata.  Before  this  assem- 
bly the  tribune  had  the  right  to  explain  and  defend 
the  course  which  he  had  taken,  and  the  plebeians, 


THE  FIGHT    WITHIN   THE   CITY.  93 

after  hearing  him,  passed  resolutions  of  indorse- 
ment or  dissent  {plebiscites).  When  the  tribunes 
had  got  the  plebs  together  for  this  purpose,  there 
were  a  thousand  questions  of  another  character 
which  it  occurred  to  them  from  time  to  time  to  dis- 
cuss in  their  presence.  On  these,  too,  the  plebeians 
used  to  express  their  opinion  by  votes  which  were 
binding  as  far  as  they  concerned  themselves  alone. 
But  in  the  beginning,  they  had,  of  course,  no  more 
power  to  legislate  for  the  entire  community  by  such 
resolutions  than  would  any  irregular  meeting  of 
citizens  in  modern  times.  In  471  B.  c.,  however,  by 
the  Publilian  law,  the  constitution  and  powers  of 
the  plebeian  assembly  were  radically  changed.  In 
the  first  place,  the  arrangement  by  curia,  which  had 
prevailed  during  its  first  twenty  years,  now  gave 
way  to  a  tribal  organization.  When  Servius  had 
formed  his  new  exercitus,  he  had  divided  the  city 
into  four  artificial  tribes,  for  convenience  in  making 
the  levy.  In  495  B.  c.,  seventeen  further  divisions 
of  the  same  character  were  made  in  the  incorpo- 
rated country  about  the  city.  The  law  of  Publilius 
provided  that  every  plebeian  freeholder  who  was  en- 
rolled in  any  one  of  these  twenty-one  tribes  should 
have  the  right  to  vote  in  a  new  legislative  assembly, 
the  "  concilium  tributum  plebis"  in  which  the  ple- 
beian tribunes  and  sediles  were  to  be  elected.  The 
object  of  this  reform  is  said  by  Livy  to  have  been 
to  prevent  the  patricians  from  exercising  a  control 
over  the  measures  of  the  commonalty  as  they  had 
been  able  to  through  their  clients  while  the  arrange- 
ment by  curia  was  maintained.  At  the  same  time, 


94  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

it  is  conjectured,  the  plebiscite*  were  made  binding 
on  the  state  at  large,  like  the  laws  of  the  comitia 
centuriata,  provided  they  had  previously  received 
the  sanction  of  the  whole  senate. 

8.  How  the  Tribuneship  worked  in  Prac- 
tice.— There  have  been  a  great  many  absolute 
monarchs  in  modern  times,  but,  as  we  have  already 
remarked,  none  exactly  like  the  Roman  rex ;  and 
in  the  same  way,  although  there  have  been  a  great 
many  constitutional  struggles  in  modern  times,  the 
combatants  in  no  one  of  them  have  ever  thought  to 
compromise  by  creating  a  magistracy  like  the  Ro- 
man plebeian  tribuneship.  In  fact,  this  office  is 
quite  without  parallel  in  the  history  of  any  other 
nation,  and  it  is  one  of  the  many  evidences  which  we 
have  of  the  early  Romans'  ability  to  exercise  un- 
usual powers  with  moderation  that  the  orderly  de- 
velopment of  the  Roman  system  of  government 
was  materially  assisted  by  its  existence.  But,  even 
they  themselves  were  harassed  by  its  obvious  incon- 
veniences. Here  were  officers,  elected  by  a  part  of 
the  people,  originally  intended  to  be  protectors  of 
the  poor,  who  had  so  extended  their  functions  that 
in  civil  matters  they  stood  on  a  level  with  the  con- 
suls in  the  initiation  and  execution  of  public  busi- 
ness, and  besides  were  able  to  practically  stop  the 
wheels  of  government,  at  their  will,  by  interposing 
their  veto.  There  were  thus  two  hostile  cities  with 
all  the  machinery  of  government  in  full  operation, 
living  together  and  within  each  other.  Both  orders 
in  the  state  recognized  the  dangers  and  difficulties 
of  such  a  state  of  affairs,  and  united  in  concessions 


THE  FIGHT    WITHIN    THE   CITY.  95 

which  would  remove  the  necessity  for  its  continu- 
ance. From  a  political  standpoint,  this  was  the 
occasion  for  the  institution  of  the  decemvirate  in 
45 1  B.  c.  It  was  hoped  that  if  the  laws  of  the  state, 
which  had  thus  far  been  a  matter  of  oral  tradition 
in  the  hands  of  the  few,  were  codified  and  published, 
so  as  to  be  accessible  to  the  poor  and  unlearned  as 
well  as  to  the  rich  and  noble,  sufficient  protection 
could  be  secured  for  the  plebeians  without  the  ex- 
istence of  the  tribuneship. 

9.  The  Decemvirate. — With  this  end  in  view, 
the  regular  consular  and  tribunician  government 
was  temporarily  supplanted  by  a  commission  of 
ten  men  elected  by  the  comitia  centuriata.  They 
were  clothed  with  complete  executive  power,. even 
the  right  of  appeal  from  their  decisions  being  sus- 
pended. At  the  same  time,  they  formed  what 
would  correspond  in  some  degree  to  a  constitution- 
al convention  of  modern  times.  Their  sphere  here, 
however,  was  wider  than  that  of  a  constitutional 
convention,  because  the  criminal  and  civil  as  well 
as  the  public  law  came  within  their  cognizance. 
In  general,  they  were  to  collect  and  amend  the  laws 
of  Rome  until  their  definitions  and  provisions 
should  be  an  efficient  substitute  for  the  practical 
anafchy  to  which  tribunician  interference  every 
now  and  then  gave  rise.  Plebeians  were  made 
eligible  to  this  office.  We  have  not  yet  at  this 
period  emerged  from  the  darkness  and  obscurity 
which  cover  the  early  history  of  the  city,  and  we 
can  not  feel  any  confidence  that  the  accounts  which 
the  ancients  give  us  of  the  decemvirate  are  at  all 


96  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

trustworthy.  The  story  that  the  decemvirs  were 
driven  out  of  power  by  a  popular  uprising  is  now 
generally  disbelieved,  and  it  is  taken  to  be  much 
more  likely  that  they  were  not  allowed  to  complete 
their  work  because  they  had  incurred  the  hostility 
of  the  aristocracy  by  the  liberal  provisions  which 
they  made  for  the  plebeians'  protection.  The  code 
which  they  compiled  under  the  name  of  the  laws  of 
the  Twelve  Tables  has  been  preserved  to  us  only  in 
a  mutilated  condition,  but  our  information  about  it 
from  all  sources  is  very  considerable.  Its  imme- 
diate effect  on  the  pending  constitutional  struggle 
was  very  great,  and  it  had  a  subsequent  influence 
of  the  most  wide-reaching  character  on  the  develop- 
ment of  Roman  law. 

10.  The  Influence  of  the  Decemvirate's 
Legislation  on  the  Development  of  Roman 
Law. — To  consider  these  points  in  an  inverse 
order,  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  many  advantages 
naturally  followed  from  the  codification  of  the  law 
at  so  early  a  stage  in  its  history.  It  was  by  this 
means  reduced  to  a  simple  and  intelligible  form, 
capable  of  application  in  a  wide  range  of  cases, 
before  the  more  extended  business  interests  of  the 
city  had  given  it  a  complexity  which  would  make 
this  difficult,  if  not  impossible.  Unless,  however, 
a  legal  system  have  in  it  the  principle  of  growth, 
there  is  a  danger  in  such  early  codification  which 
may  outweigh  its  benefits.  It  may  happen  that 
strange  and  hard  problems  will  present  themselves, 
and  that  the  code,  which  is  supposed  to  contain  all 
the  law,  can  furnish  no  solution,  because  it  was 


THE  FIGHT   WITHIN   THE   CITY.  97 

compiled  when  such  a  complication  could  not  have 
been  thought  of.  But  Roman  ingenuity  guarded 
by  many  devices  against  this  serious  difficulty,  and 
kept  its  laws  replete  with  life  and  adapted  to  meet 
each  new  combination  of  circumstances.  One  of 
these  devices  involved  constant  reference  to  the 
laws  of  the  Twelve  Tables,  and  made  them  the  real 
or  feigned  source  of  much  of  what  was  purest  and 
most  intelligent  in  the  city's  legal  system.  In  this 
respect,  they  came  to  hold  the  same  relation  to  the 
general  Roman  law  as  the  common  law  does  to  that 
of  England.  In  the  view  of  the  English  courts, 
there  could  arise  in  the  realm  no  case  not  covered 
by  statute,  which  was  not  adequately  provided  for 
in  the  mass  of  customs  and  precedents  constituting 
in  theory  the  common  law  of  the  land.  If  in  any 
instance  the  principle  of  no  previous  decision  could 
be  made  to  fit,  the  judge  found  guidance,  as  it  was 
said,  in  nubibus.  In  other  words,  he  legislated  for 
the  case,  drawing  on  his  own  sense  of  justice  and 
enlightened  judgment  for  the  law  which  would  be 
applicable.  At  Rome,  in  the  same  way,  there  grew 
up  a  class  of  lawyers  (jurtsconsulti)  whose  knowl- 
edge of  the  contents  of  the  Twelve  Tables  was  relied 
on  as  final.  At  first  this  was  a  matter  of  irregular 
custom,  but  under  the  empire  it  was  controlled  by 
statutes.  When  a  case  came  before  him,  the  judge, 
who  may  have  been  quite  unlearned  in  such  things, 
having  ascertained  the  facts,  asked  a  jurisconsult:^ 
for  information  about  the  provisions  of  the  code 
which  covered  it.  Quite  usually  it  contained  no 
provisions  which  had  any  reference  to  the  matter, 
5 


98  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

because,  of  course,  society  soon  developed  situa- 
tions much  beyond  the  ken  of  men  like  the  decem- 
virs, who  lived  four  hundred  years  or  more  before 
Christ.  But,  under  these  circumstances,  tf\Qjurtscon- 
sultus  invented  an  equitable  disposition  of  the  sub- 
ject under  dispute,  and  reported  it  as  though  he 
had  found  it  in  one  of  the  Twelve  Tables.  This 
did  not  deceive  any  one ;  but,  by  a  legal  fiction,  the 
solution  necessary  for  every  problem  was  supposed 
to  be  in  the  code,  and  the  jurisconsulti  to  be  capa- 
ble of  rinding  it.  These  lawyers,  thus,  on  the  basis 
of  this  early  legislation,  became  one  of  the  great 
agents  in  maintaining  the  freshness  and  adequacy 
of  the  Roman  laws.  They  were  practically  legis- 
lators, but  always  with  reference  to  this  simple  sys- 
tem of  the  decemvirs. 

ii.  The  Political  Effect  of  the  Decemvi- 
rate's  Legislation. — The  decemvirate  passed  out 
of  existence  in  449  B.  c.,  but  its  legislation  was  in- 
corporated into  the  constitution  of  the  state  by  a 
decree  of  the  people  made  in  the  comitia  centuriata. 
The  ill-defined  powers  of  the  patrician  consuls  were, 
therefore,  limited  by  its  work,  as  had  been  the  in- 
tention of  all  parties  concerned,  at  the  time  of  its 
creation.  But,  in  spite  of  this  fact,  the  tribunate, 
which  had  proved  such  a  hindrance  to  the  easy 
course  of  the  government,  was  restored,  with  all  the 
extraordinary  prerogatives  attached  to  it,  unim- 
paired except  in  one  particular.  This,  of  course, 
was  a  very  important  gain  for  the  plebeians,  and  is 
an  indication  that  their  power  in  the  state  was 
now  so  formidable  that  their  ultimate  success  in  the 


THE  FIGHT    WITHIN   THE   CITY.  99 

struggle  for  political  equality  was  assured.  The 
peculiar  reasons  which  had  originally  led  to  the 
institution  of  the  tribunate,  however,  ceased  to  be 
operative  because  the  poor  no  longer  stood  in  con- 
stant need  of  political  protectors  when  the  laws 
were  known,  and  the  discriminations  which  they 
had  unjustly  made  in  favor  of  the  rich  had  been 
repealed.  The  character  of  this  plebeian  magis- 
tracy began,  therefore,  at  this  period  to  undergo 
considerable  change.  The  power  which  the  trib- 
unes had  usurped,  of  vetoing  a  decree  of  the  sen- 
ate as  a  whole  instead  of  securing  exemption  for 
individuals  from  its  operation,  and  the  right  which 
the  plebeian  assembly  where  they  presided  had  ac- 
quired of  legislating  for  both  orders  in  the  state, 
made  it  seem  advisable  to  give  them  seats  in  the 
senate.  It  was  simply  a  waste  of  labor  for  the  sen- 
ate to  devise  measures  if  some  tribune  was  to  veto 
them  afterward,  and  this  could  be  prevented  only 
by  having  what  objections  there  were,  stated  in  ad- 
vance. The  tribunes  in  this  way  listened  and  were 
heard  in  the  debates  in  the  curia.  When  their  op- 
position could  not  be  removed,  no  attempt  was 
made  to  mature  any  proposition  under  considera- 
tion ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  they  were  constantly 
relied  on  by  the  senate  to  carry  through  the  concilium 
plebis  measures  which  the  senate  was  interested  in 
having  enacted.  At  the  best  period  of  the  Roman 
republic,  therefore,  the  plebeian  tribunes  were  at- 
tached to  the  senate,  instead  of  being  protectors  of 
the  poor.  This  complete  transformation  was  not 
made  until  a  much  later  time,  and  will  be  discussed 


ioo  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

more  fully  in  another  connection  ;  but  its  beginning 
dates  from  the  restoration  of  the  office  after  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  decemvirs. 

12.  The  Consular  Tribunes.— At  this  point, 
one  further  temporary  change  was  made  in  the  form 
of  government,  which  was  significant  for  many  rea- 
sons, but  for  one  in  particular.  As  has  been  point- 
ed out,  the  combatants  thus  far  in  this  constitu- 
tional struggle  at  Rome  were  the  rich,  plebeians 
and  patricians,  on  the  one  side,  against  the  poor  on 
the  other.  But,  four  years  after  the  abolition  of 
the  decemvirate  (445  B.  c.),  a  law  was  enacted 
which  put  the  imperium  into  the  hands  of  officers 
who  might  by  the  constitution  be  chosen  as  well 
from  among  the  plebeians  as  from  the  patricians. 
These  were  the  so-called  consular  tribunes.  In- 
stead of  electing  two  consuls  who  should  appoint 
six  military  tribunes  to  command  the  legions  un- 
der them,  as  had  been  the  custom,  it  was  now  pro- 
vided that  the  people  might  elect  six  or  a  smaller 
number  of  tribuni  militum,  and  confer  on  them  the 
power  which  the  consuls  had  exercised  (imperium 
consulare).  As  all  the  soldiers,  both  plebeians  and 
patricians,  had  been  considered  eligible  to  the  mili- 
tary tribuneship,  plebeians  might  now  obtain  the 
consular  power,  though  not  yet  the  consulate  itself. 
With  the  imperium  thus  in  their  grasp,  the  plebeian 
aristocracy  were  induced  to  recognize  the  fact  that 
there  was  a  practical  community  of  interests  be- 
tween themselves  and  the  less  prosperous  members 
of  their  own  class.  The  institution  of  the  consular 
tribuneship  was  in  this  way  of  the  utmost  impor- 


THE  FIGHT    WITHIN  THE   CITY.          101 

tance,  because  it  led  to  an  alliance  between  the  rich 
and  poor  plebeians.  The  two  orders  in  the  state 
were  now  clearly  marked,  and  every  year  they  tested 
their  strength  in  a  struggle  over  the  question  whether 
the  consular  government  should  be  restored  or  not. 
When  the  patricians  won,  they  held  the  chief  magis- 
tracies, of  course,  exclusively  ;  and  at  first,  even  in 
those  years  when  consular  tribunes  were  chosen, 
the  patricians  succeeded  in  filling  the  whole  num- 
ber from  among  themselves.  But  there  could  be 
no  doubt  about  the  final  result  of  this  contest,  now 
that  the  plebeians  were  united. 

13.  The  Military  Quaestor,  the  Censor,  the 
Praetor,  and  the  Curule  fiLdile. — In  367  B.  c., 
the  consulship,  now  permanently  re-established,  was 
thrown  open  to  the  plebeians  by  the  Licinian  laws. 
It  was  further  provided  by  the  same  measure  that 
one  at  least  of  the  consuls  should  always  be  a  ple- 
beian, while  both  might  be  selected  from  that  or- 
der. The  patricians,  however,  in  expectation  of 
this  outcome,  had  already  succeeded  in  making  a 
considerable  reduction  in  the  consuls'  power.  We 
have  seen  how  the  care  of  the  city's  treasures  had 
been  intrusted  to  two  city  quaestors,  soon  after 
the  abolition  of  the  monarchy.  In  like  manner, 
soon  after  the  fall  of  the  decemvirate,  the  expendi- 
tures connected  with  military  affairs,  which  had 
hitherto  been  in  the  hands  of  the  consuls,  were  put 
under  the  control  of  new  patrician  officers,  the 
military  quaestors,  who  were  to  accompany  the 
army  on  its  march.  They  were  to  be  elected  in 
the  comitia  tributay  an  assembly  of  the  whole  people, 


102  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

patricians  as  well  as  plebeians,  by  tribes.  Of  this 
we  now  hear  for  the  first  time.  If  it  had  any  pre- 
vious history  it  is  unknown  by  us,  but  the  right  of 
legislating  was  secured  to  it  by  a  law  of  this  same 
date  (449  B.  c.).  In  435  B.  c.,  the  censorship  was 
established.  Its  functions  were  very  extensive,  and 
made  the  most  serious  inroad  on  the  consul's  im- 
perium.  The  censor  made  a  list  of  all  the  citizens, 
once  in  five  years,  and  a  register  of  each  man's 
property.  On  the  basis  of  one  or  the  other  or  both 
of  these,  he  assigned  to  every  one  his  position  in  the 
different  popular  assemblies.  In  addition,  he  had 
among  the  executive  officers  the  ultimate  control 
over  the  state's  finances,  so  far  as  the  collection 
of  its  revenues  was  concerned,  and  over  such  ex- 
penditures as  were  connected  with  the  construction 
of  public  works,  roads,  bridges,  buildings,  and  the 
like.  Immediately  after  the  enactment  of  the  Li- 
cinian  laws,  the  praetorship  and  the  curule  sedileship 
were  instituted.  The  reason  given  in  the  first  case 
was  the  alleged  ignorance  of  the  plebeians  about 
the  law,  and  a  field  was  provided  for  the  new 
office  by  stripping  the  consuls  of  the  jurisdiction 
which  they  had  had  in  judicial  matters.  There 
were  to  be  two  curule  sediles,  and  to  them  was 
given  the  supervision  of  the  markets  and  public 
works,  together  with  police  judicial  powers  neces- 
sary for  its  exercise.  But  all  these  offices,  and  the 
dictatorship  in  addition,  were  opened  to  the  ple- 
beians by  the  year  337  B.  c. 

14.  The  Greater  Gods  of  the  Romans.-— 
Side  by  side  with  the  magistrates  who  exercised 


THE  FIGHT    WITHIN   THE   CITY.          103 

political  functions  in  the  state,  there  was  a  great 
body  of  officials  who  were  concerned  primarily  with 
the  care  of  the  national  religion.  Some  of  these 
priesthoods  had  existed  from  the  earliest  times,  and 
others  had  been  created  as  the  character  of  the 
state's  civil  constitution  or  its  worship  had  been 
altered  ;  but  they  were  all,  at  the  outset,  occupied 
exclusively  by  the  patricians,  as  a  matter  of  course. 
From  these  positions,  moreover,  they  were  not  so 
easily  dislodged.  The  gods  in  the  Roman  system 
and  the  popular  ideas  about  their  nature  had  ex- 
panded very  greatly  before  the  time  of  the  second 
Punic  war,  from  the  form  in  which  we  have  pict- 
ured them  in  a  preceding  chapter.  This  was  partly 
the  result  of  internal  development,  and  partly  due 
to  intellectual  contact  with  the  Greeks.  The  sec- 
ond of  these  influences  was,  however,  in  every  way 
much  the  more  important.  We  have  seen  how 
completely  the  Romans  carried  out  one  species  of 
god-making,  but  their  success  in  this  direction  was 
offset  by  their  comparative  incapacity  for  independ- 
ent growth  in  the  other  line.  They  assigned  to 
every  object  in  their  world  its  special  deity,  but  were 
quite  unequal  to  the  work  of  detaching  these  special 
deities  from  the  things  to  which  they  had  originally 
belonged  and  converting  them  into  gods.  The 
Greeks,  whose  heritage  of  ideas  from  the  Indo- 
European  stock  is  taken  to  have  been  the  same  as 
that  of  the  Romans,  quickly  filled  an  Olympus  with 
a  great  throng  of  divinities  of  man-like  natures. 
Their  gods  were  soon  transferred  from  the  narrow 
activities  in  which  they  exercised  themselves  at  their 
10 


104  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

birth,  and  were  fancied  as  possessing  undefined 
powers  in  all  directions.  They  became,  as  it  were, 
another  race  of  beings,  more  glorious  than  men, 
dwelling  in  a  world  more  glorious  than  men's  world, 
but  having  human  passions  and  ambitions.  The 
story  of  their  lives  and  mutual  relations  was  told 
and  believed  as  one  might  tell  and  believe  the  his- 
tory of  a  city  on  the  earth,  in  which  were  recounted 
the  deeds  of  heroes,  the  sorrows  which  come  from 
love,  and  bits  of  personal  description,  gossip,  and 
scandal.  The  explanation  of  this  is  found  in  the 
brightness  of  the  Greek  mind  and  the  vigor  of  its 
imagination.  But  the  Romans,  as  long  as  they  re- 
mained intellectually  isolated,  never  developed  a 
mythology.  They  had  their  inherited  conception 
of  Jupiter  and  of  Vesta,  as  divinities  of  a  general 
character.  But,  with  these  exceptions,  they  clung 
with  persistency  to  the  worship  of  the  many  numina 
of  various  things,  as  already  described.  They  select- 
ed, however,  from  among  these  for  especial  honor, 
those  of  them  which  were  the  doubles  of  things  ex- 
ceptionally important  in  their  lives.  Thus  Mars, 
"  the  spirit  of  killing/'  was  worthy  of  attention  from 
a  warlike  people,  and  under  this  name,  or  as  Quiri- 
nus,  the  corresponding  Sabine  deity,  he  was  sig- 
naled out  for  general  worship,  because  "  he  hurled 
the  spear,  protected  the  flocks,  and  overthrew  the 
foe."  In  the  same  way,  Terminus,  the  u  spirit  of 
boundaries,"  Ceres,  the  "  spirit  of  growth,"  Pales, 
the  "  spirit  of  the  flocks,"  Saturnus,  the  a  spirit  of 
sowing,"  Janus,  the  "  spirit  of  opening,"  and  others 
like  them,  became  general  gods  in  whose  worship 


THE   FIGHT    WITHIN    THE  CITY.          105 

there  was  a  national  and  periodic  participation. 
Even  these,  however,  were  not,  like  the  Greek  gods, 
completely  anthropomorphized  and  endowed  with 
general  powers.  No  tales  were  told  of  their  ex- 
ploits. They  were  like  the  others,  except  that  the 
character  of  the  things  with  which  they  were  con- 
nected, like  sowing,  or  the  frequency  of  their  oc- 
currence, like  opening,  gave  them  pre-eminence  and 
universal  importance. 

15.  The  Greek  Modifications  of  the  Roman 
Religion. — The  infusion  of  Greek  ideas  about  the- 
ology wrought  great  changes  in  this  system.  We 
have  no  definite  information  as  to  when  this  was 
made  or  in  what  manner.  It  must  have  come,  of 
course,  from  the  Greek  cities  in  Italy,  because  there 
are  no  evidences  of  intimacy  between  Rome  and 
Greece  proper  in  this  early  time.  But  we  can  no 
more  hope  to  know  its  details  than  we  can  hope  to 
know  the  details  of  the  introduction  of  the  alpha- 
bet into  Rome,  which  was  part  of  the  same  general 
movement.  The  Romans  met  the  Greeks  of  Magna 
Grsecia  in  trade  and  arms.  They  learned  with  in- 
terest of  their  ability  to  extract  from  the  gods  in- 
formation and  guidance  by  means  of  oracles  and 
sacred  writings.  They  purchased  from  the  men  of 
Cumse  the  Sibylline  books  to  be  used  in  this  way, 
and,  from  what  they  learned  there  and  from  what 
Greeks  told  them,  they  began  to  supplement  their 
catalogue  of  gods  and  to  alter  their  nature.  The 
guiding  principle  in  this  transformation  was  the 
idea  that,  for  every  Greek  god,  there  existed  or 
should  exist  a  corresponding  one  of  their  own. 


106  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

This  notion  was  probably  based  on  the  ease  with 
which  apparent  identification  was  effected  in  many 
cases;  but,  when  once  begun,  difficulties  and  con- 
tradictions were  not  allowed  to  stand  in  the  way  of 
its  thorough  application.  The  debt  in  every  case 
was  from  the  Roman  to  the  Greek.  Jupiter  and 
Mars,  having  some  attributes  in  common  with  those 
of  Zeus  and  Ares,  were  endowed  with  all  the  quali- 
ties which  the  Greeks  had  given  to  these  creatures 
of  their  fancy.  In  other  cases,  a  mere  accidental 
resemblance  was  counted  sufficient  to  justify  identi- 
fication and  all  which  it  implied.  Thus,  Saturnus, 
the  god  of  sowing,  was  identified  with  Kronos  sim- 
ply because  he  was  reputed  to  be  of  great  antiquity, 
and  then  was  made  the  father  of  Jupiter  because 
Kronos  was  the  father  of  Zeus  in  the  Greek  legends. 
Where  gods  were  lacking  for  the  purposes  of  this 
identification,  numina  were  elevated  to  the  rank  of 
gods.  Minerva  (cf.  mens),  the  spirit  or  double  of 
mental  power,  was  in  this  way  made  to  correspond 
with  the  great  Greek  goddess  Athene,  and  Mercurius 
(cf.  merx),  the  spirit  or  double  of  trade,  was  con- 
ceived to  be  the  same  as  the  clever  Hermes,  the 
messenger  of  the  gods.  Finally,  whenever  the  lim- 
itless number  of  numina  suggested  no  parallel,  the  . 
Greek  gods  themselves  were  directly  transferred 
with  their  histories  and  characters  intact.  Thus, 
for  example,  Apollo  and  Hercules  and  Castor  and 
Pollux  came  to  be  worshiped  at  Rome. 

16.  The  Value  of  this  Transformation. — 
All  this  had  been  accomplished  by  the  time  of  the 
second  Punic  war.  It  appears  to  have  been  quite 


THE  FIGHT    WITHIN    THE   CITY.          107 

gradual  in  its  progress,  and  to  have  been,  on  the 
whole,  beneficial  as  far  as  it  had  any  influence  at 
all.  The  Greek's  conception  of  the  divine  nature 
was  higher  than  the  Roman's,  and  men's  lives  are 
shaped  and  colored  in  great  measure  by  the  char- 
acter of  their  ideas  on  such  matters.  If  they  are 
not  capable  of  developing  themselves,  the  infusion 
of  stimulating  notions  from  outside  will  be  valuable 
provided  these  can  be  assimilated.  The  Romans 
thus  got  enough  from  the  Greeks  in  this  early  time 
to  give  some  warmth  to  their  own  worship,  but 
much  of  what  they  adopted  in  name  was  quite 
without  effect  in  practice,  because  it  was  so  foreign. 
The  Roman's  religion  by  itself  was  purely  a  matter 
of  faith  and  ceremony.  In  the  first  place,  he  be- 
lieved that  there  were  gods  who  had  power  over 
men ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  he  propitiated 
them  by  the  exact  performance  of  such  rites  as  he 
thought  they  demanded.  It  was  entirely  different 
from  religion  in  the  modern  sense,  which  includes 
moral  and  theological  elements.  There  was  little 
connection  between  morality  and  religion  among 
the  Romans,  and  their  minds  shrank  from  debates 
about  the  nature  of  God,  with  which  theology  con- 
cerns itself.  When  contact  with  the  Greeks  would 
have  carried  them  into  these  fields,  they  long  failed 
to  follow.  During  the  years  of  their  growth  their 
religion  of  action  was  the  worship  of  the  doubles 
of  their  dead,  and  of  such  things  as  had  influence 
on  their  lives.  As  already  said,  the  city,  like  the 
family,  had  its  ancestors,  and  their  honor  was  main- 
tained against  intruders  from  within  and  enemies 


io8  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

from  without.  The  struggle  between  the  so-called 
patricians  and  plebeians  got  more  than  half  its 
earnestness  from  the  unwillingness  of  the  former  to 
admit  strangers  to  participation  in  the  sacrifices  to 
their  dead.  As  the  plebeians,  however,  forced  their 
way  to  political  equality,  this  early  faith  lost  its  in- 
tensity along  with  its  exclusiveness.  The  family 
worship,  and  that  of  the  state,  modeled  after  it, 
were  still  maintained,  but  the  general  views  which 
came  from  the  Greeks  were  getting  the  ascendency. 
17.  The  Priesthoods.— The  priestly  office  of 
the  king  had  been  delegated,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  republic,  to  a  rex  sacrorum,  but  his  sphere  was 
limited  to  the  offering  of  sacrifices,  while  all  the 
sacred  powers  of  the  king  were  in  the  hands  of  the 
pontifex  maximus.  He  may  be  described  as  the 
head  of  the  state's  religious  system  during  the  his- 
torical period.  From  the  earliest  times  there  had 
existed  at  Rome  a  college  of  pontiffs,  who  held 
their  positions  for  life,  and  were  the  repositories  of 
the  nation's  sacred  lore.  When  the  regal  constitu- 
tion came  to  an  end,  they  chose  for  themselves  a 
head  who  should  perform  such  duties  as  needed 
the  services  of  one  person,  and  which  had  before 
been  performed  by  the  king.  This  pontifex  maxi- 
mm  lived  in  the  regia,  close  by  the  atrium  of  the 
city  where  was  burning  its  sacred  fire.  He  selected 
the  vestal  virgins  who  tended  this  flame,  and  ap- 
pointed the  priests  (flamines)  on  whom  rested  the 
care  of  honoring  particular  deities.  Of  these  there 
was  a  large  number,  but  three  were  particularly  im- 
portant, the  priest  of  Jupiter  (Flamen  Dialis\  and 


THE  FIGHT    WIT  PUN   THE   CITY.          ic9 

the  priests  (famines)  of  Mars  and  Quirinus.  The 
pontifex  maximus  also,  in  company  with  the  other 
pontiffs,  interpreted  the  laws  of  religion,  and  ac- 
quired enormous  political  influence  in  this  way. 
No  movement  could  be  made  in  any  department  of 
the  government  which  it  was  not  in  his  power  to  ar- 
rest by  declaring  it  to  be  in  violation  of  the  state's 
religion.  When  he  did  not  care  to  interfere  in  this 
direct  style,  however,  he  could  exert  the  same  press- 
ure by  altering  the  calendar,  for  the  regulation  of 
this  rested  in  his  hands,  or  by  the  character  of  the 
answer  which  he  gave,  when  consulted  as  to  the 
proper  course  of  procedure  in  a  court  or  popular  as- 
sembly— a  matter  about  which  he  was  supposed  to 
have  exclusive  knowledge.  A  similar  political  in- 
fluence was  exercised  by  the  augurs  and  the  keepers 
of  the  Sibylline  books,  one  or  the  other  of  whom  was 
consulted  before  any  public  measure  of  importance 
was  undertaken.  The  augurs,  of  whom  there  was 
a  college,  and  who,  like  the  pontiffs,  held  office  for 
life,  declared  whether  the  gods  favored  or  opposed 
any  proposed  enterprise  by  observing  the  heavens 
or  the  flight  of  birds,  and  the  keepers  of  the  Sibylline 
books  by  interpreting  and  expounding  these  sacred 
writings.  So  long  as  the  patricians  alone  held  these 
positions,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  plebeians,  no  mat- 
ter how  complete  an  equality  was  established  in  re- 
spect to  the  civil  offices,  the  real  political  power  of 
the  two  orders  was  quite  different.  It  was  possible 
for  the  patricians  through  the  agency  of  the  augurs 
.  to  prevent  the  election  of  magistrates,  or  their  enter- 
ing on  their  duties  after  their  election,  or  the  holding 


no  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

of  a  popular  assembly  which  was  likely  to  pass  a  law 
obnoxious  to  them,  simply  by  having  the  augurs  de- 
clare the  auspices  unfavorable  to  proceeding.  The 
plebeians  never  made  any  effort  to  secure  admission 
to  such  priesthoods  as  were  of  a  purely  religious 
character,  and  the  patricians  always  retained  the 
sole  right  of  eligibility  to  the  position  of  the  fla- 
mines,  and  of  the  rex  sacrorum,  and  to  the  college 
of  the  Salii  who  worshiped  Mars  by  dancing.  But 
the  prize  connected  with  the  priesthoods  which 
were  of  political  importance  was  too  great  to  be 
the  exclusive  property  of  one  order.  By  the  Licin- 
ian  laws,  the  number  of  guardians  and  interpreters 
of  the  Sibylline  books  was  increased  from  two  to 
ten,  and  plebeians  made  eligible  to  the  office  ;  and 
by  the  Ogulnian  law  of  296  B.  c.  the  number  of 
pontiffs,  as  well  as  that  of  the  augurs,  was  increased 
from  six  to  nine,  and  the  plebeians  obtained  the 
right  to  five  of  the  nine  places  in  each  college. 

1 8.  The  End  of  the  Struggle.— The  end 
of  the  long  struggle  between  the  two  orders  was 
reached  in  the  Hortensian  law,  passed  about  287 
B.  c.  By  this  a  plebiscitum  was  freed  from  all  limi- 
tations, and  a  decree  of  the  plebs,  made  under  the 
guidance  of  a  tribune,  rendered  as  binding  over 
the  whole  people  without  the  approval  of  the  sen- 
ate as  a  decree  of  the  comitia  centuriata,  made  under 
the  guidance  of  a  consul.  The  accounts  which  the 
ancient  authorities  give  us  of  this  measure  make  it 
seem  identical  with  the  one  already  enacted  in  con- 
nection with  the  institution  of  the  concilium  plebis. 
Some  modern  writers,  therefore,  regard  it  as  sim- 


THE  FIGHT    WITHIN   THE   CITY.          in 

ply  a  re-enactment  of  an  earlier  law  which  had  not 
been  observed  ;  while  others  suppose  that  up  to  this 
time  the  control  of  the  senate  had  been  greater 
over  the  legislation  of  the  plebs  than  over  that  of 
\hepopuhts,  and  that  they  were  now  placed  on  an 
equality  in  this  particular.  In  any  event,  however, 
the  tables  were  turned  on  the  patricians  in  the 
matter  of  political  disability.  The  plebeians  were 
members  of  every  popular  assembly,  and  were 
eligible  to  every  office  and  to  every  influential 
priesthood.  The  patricians  had  no  votes  in  an  as- 
sembly in  which  very  many  of  the  most  important 
laws  were  passed,  were  not  eligible  to  the  powerful 
office  of  tribune  of  the  plebs,  or  to  the  office  of  ple- 
beian sedile,  and  were  excluded  from  one  consul's 
and  one  censor's  position,  while  the  plebeians  were 
legally  eligible,  for  both. 

19.  The  Economic  Results  of  the  Strug- 
gle.— As  we  look  back  over  the  conflict  thus  ended, 
it  wears  the  aspect  of  a  senseless  scramble  for  offices, 
without  any  regard  to  the  acquisition  of  more  sub- 
stantial advantages.  It  had  begun  in  discontent, 
based  on  the  exclusion  of  the  poor  from  rights  be- 
fore the  law  which  made  their  lot  harder  to  bear, 
and  their  poverty  greater.  Leaving  out  the  relig- 
ious motive,  the  patricians  resisted  the  efforts  of  the 
plebeians  to  force  their  way  into  the  administration 
of  the  state,  because  they  enjoyed  the  exercise  of 
power,  and  because  it  secured  them  privileges  and 
immunities  which  were  valuable.  The  intensity  of 
the  plebeians'  ambition  for  political  equality,  on  the 
other  hand,  increased  with  their  success,  and  this, 


H2  ROMAN   CONSTITUTION. 

which  had  been  desired  at  first  only  because  of  the 
material  good  it  carried  with  it,  became  soon  the 
main  object  of  their  endeavors.  The  aristocracy 
yielded  with  infinite  cleverness  inch  by  inch,  and 
used  to  their  uttermost  the  advantages  which  the 
best  always  have  in  a  contest  with  the  many. 
Where  the  commonalty  grasped  for  a  reality,  it 
humored  them  with  the  gift  of  a  name ;  and  in  the 
end,  when  they  had  got  all  the  offices  which  they 
ought  for,  the  real  prize  of  the  battle  was  still  un- 
won.  The  Licinian  laws,  which  opened  the  consul- 
ship, contained  in  addition  provisions  for  a  more 
equitable  division  of  the  public  lands,  and  for  the 
relief  of  the  debtor  class.  But  such  laws  were  en- 
acted more  easily  than  they  were  enforced,  and  in 
this  instance  remained  so  many  words  in  the  stat- 
ute-books. The  state's  progress  in  war  and  the 
expansion  of  its  commerce  diverted  the  minds  01 
the  poor  from  their  unfortunate  situation,  but  no 
remedy  was  forthcoming  for  it  until  the  Gracchi 
devised  one  which  wrecked  the  constitution.  In 
spite,  however,  of  the  insubstantial  character  of 
these  movements  from  one  standpoint,  they  were 
very  real  from  some  others. 

20.  The  Social  Results  of  the  Struggle.— 
They  destroyed  forever  the  old  patriarchal  form  of 
the  city's  government,  and  supplanted  its  simplicity 
by  a  system  which  was  complex  and  full  of  refine- 
ments. The  powers  of  the  king,  for  example, 
which  the  early  consuls  had  inherited,  were  now 
in  the  hands  of  a  group  of  officers  whose  original 
unity  no  one  but  an  antiquarian  could  see.  The 


THE  FIGHT    WITHIN   THE   CITY.          113 

integrity  of  the  family  organization,  too,  was  loos- 
ened as  the  worship  of  the  household  gods  de- 
clined and  Greek  notions  increased  in  popularity. 
The  line  which  had  divided  the  citizens  from  the 
crowd  was  obliterated,  and  legal  marriages  were 
contracted  between  members  of  the  two  orders. 
The  sacred  ceremony  (confarreatio)  by  which  they 
had  been  solemnized,  gave  way  to  civil  forms.  The 
individual  got  greater  power  over  the  disposition  of 
his  property,  and  new  sorts  of  wills  were  invented 
for  this  purpose  which  should  not  require  the  cum- 
bersome formalities  of  the  old  one.  The  limits  of 
kinship  were  extended  widely  enough  to  admit  all 
those  whom  ordinary  natural  affection  would  in- 
clude, and  the  blood  of  cognates  was  made  as  good 
for  the  purposes  of  inheritance  as  was  the  blood 
of  those  who  could  trace  their  descent  through 
males.  The  agent  in  these  innovations  was  the 
praetor,  who  had  the  right  of  legislating  by  means 
of  an  edict  issued  at  his  entrance  to  office.  He, 
however,  only  acted  in  response  to  popular  opin- 
ion, which  demanded  that  the  artificialities  of  the 
earlier  system  should  come  to  an  end.  The  an- 
cient city  in  its  essential  features  perished,  therefore, 
in  this  contest,  and  that  which  emerged  from  it  was, 
to  all  intents,  modern  in  its  structure.  The  old 
ways  of  looking  at  things,  however,  had  their  influ- 
ence still  for  a  long  time,  just  as  men  who  change 
their  faith  or  their  environment  frequently  act  and 
think,  in  spite  of  their  desire  to  the  contrary,  ac- 
cording to  their  former  creed  or  surroundings  which 
they  supposed  they  had  left  forever. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

HOW   ROME   WAS   GOVERNED    AT    THE    TIME    OF    THE 
SECOND    PUNIC    WAR. 

i.  The  Nobilitas. — The  natural  inference 
from  this  very  complete  triumph  of  the  plebeians 
is  that  the  government  evolved  out  of  the  struggle 
would  be  a  democracy,  and  such  the  facts  already 
stated  show  that  it  was,  at  least  in  theory.  But,  in 
its  actual  operation,  it  maintained  its  aristocratic 
character  until  the  time  of  the  Gracchi.  The  rule 
of  the  patrician  aristocracy,  which  had  begun  at  the 
abolition  of  the  monarchy,  terminated  with  the  pas- 
sage of  the  Licinian  laws,  opening  the  consulship  to 
the  plebeians.  Immediately  after  it  the  control  of 
the  state  began  to  settle  in  the  hands  of  the  nobili- 
tas.  The  nobilitas  was,  from  the  outset,  an  aristoc- 
racy, which  differed  from  the  patriciate,  not  in  its 
nature,  but  in  its  composition.  As  we  have  seen, 
to  be  a  patrician  one  had  to  be  a  descendant  of 
some  member  of  a  clan  contained  in  the  three  origi- 
nal Roman  tribes.  The  nobilitas,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  an  aristocracy  composed  of  the  descendants  of 
office-holders.  Any  man,  any  one  of  whose  ances- 
tors had  held  a  curule  office,  was  from  this  fact  a 
noble.  The  curule  offices,  in  the  order  in  which 


GOVERNMENT  OF  ROME.  115 

they  were  held,  were  the  curule  sedileship,  the  prae- 
torship,  the  consulship,  and  perhaps  the  censorship, 
or,  in  general,  those  whose  duties  and  privileges 
had,  under  the  earliest  constitution,  belonged  to 
the  king.  The  patriciate  was,  by  this  time,  a  small 
body  in  the  state,  and  all  of  its  members  were  to 
be  found  in  the  nobilitas  as  well.  The  first  one  of 
a  plebeian  family  to  hold  a  curule  office  was  called 
a  novus  homo,  and  his  success  insured  the  nobility 
of  all  his  direct  descendants.  From  the  begin- 
ning efforts  were  made  to  limit  the  number  of  fami- 
lies from  which  representatives  were  chosen  for 
high  positions  in  the  state,  and  to  cultivate  a  class 
spirit  among  those  who  had  been  thus  honored. 
One  of  the  consuls,  for  example,  was  by  law  always 
a  plebeian,  but  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  the 
office  from  going  in  succession  to  each  of  half  a 
dozen  brothers.  The  Fasti,  for  the  period  after  the 
Licinian  laws  were  enacted,  bear  witness  to  the 
success  of  these  efforts.  Year  after  year  the  same 
cognomina  appear  constantly  in  the  lists  of  curule 
magistrates.  By  law,  almost  the  only  privilege  se- 
cured to  the  nobilitas  was  the  jus  imaginum.  This 
was  the  right  to  place  in  the  atrium  of  one's  house 
the  wax  images  of  illustrious  ancestors,  and  to  carry 
them  in  the  funeral  processions  by  which  the  fami- 
ly's dead  were  honored.  Practically,  however,  as 
has  been  said,  the  administration  of  the  government 
soon  passed  entirely  into  the  hands  of  the  nobilitas. 
2.  The  Constitution  of  the  Senate.  — It 
will  be  necessary  to  discuss  at  some  length  several 
points  before  it  will  be  clearly  shown  how  the  no- 
11 


n6  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION-. 

bilitas  gained  this  power.  But  we  give  the  clew  to 
the  explanation  when  we  say  that  its  organ  in  the 
management  of  affairs  was  the  senate.  When  the 
consul  succeeded  to  the  functions  of  the  king  at 
the  founding  of  the  republic,  the  selection  of  sen- 
ators was  one  of  his  duties.  In  435  B.  c.,  this  func- 
tion, along  with  others,  was  transferred  to  the  cen- 
sorship, then  first  established.  The  control  which 
the  censors  got  in  this  way  over  the  organization 
of  the  senate,  as  well  as  over  the  popular  assemblies, 
made  this  position  the  most  powerful  in  the  state, 
and  therefore  the  most  coveted.  The  extent  and 
consequences  of  their  power  over  the  popular  as- 
semblies will  be  discussed  in  another  connection, 
but,  in  the  choice  of  members  of  the  senate,  they 
were  limited  by  a  law  which  secured  to  every  curule 
officer  a  seat  in  the  senate  on  the  expiration  of  his 
magistracy.  The  censors,  furthermore,  were  not 
allowed  to  set  aside  this  law  in  any  case  without 
publishing  a  justification  of  their  course,  based  on 
the  proved  unfitness  of  the  candidate  for  the  posi- 
tion. The  number  of  former  incumbents  of  curule 
offices  was,  of  course,  insufficient  to  fill  the  vacan- 
cies which  occurred,  and  the  censors  were  unre- 
stricted in  the  selection  of  the  rest.  Being  nobles 
themselves  almost  without  exception,  they  naturally 
picked  out  for  these  places,  first,  prominent  young 
nobles  who  had  not  yet  held  a  curule  office ;  some- 
times they  honored  a  soldier  who  had  distinguished 
himself  on  the  battle-field  ;  and  often  they  were 
actuated  in  their  choice  by  nothing  better  than  par- 
tiality or  personal  friendship.  In  the  meetings  of 


GOVERNMENT  OF  ROME.  117 

the  senate,  priority  of  voting  belonged  to  the  ex- 
consuls,  who  formed  a  class  by  themselves,  and 
were  called  consular es.  After  them  the  ex-praetors 
QT pratorii  voted  ;  then  the  adilicii^  or  ex-curule 
aediles  ;  and,  finally,  the  pedarii,  or  those  who  had 
not  held  any  curule  office.  It  will  be  remembered 
that,  when  the  senate  was  reorganized  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  republic,  the  conscripti,  who  were  given 
votes,  were  not  allowed  to  debate.  In  the  same 
way,  now,  the  right  of  speaking  was  reserved  ex- 
clusively to  the  first  three  of  the  classes  just  enu- 
merated. 

3.  The  Theoretical  Functions  of  the  Sen- 
ate.— If  we  should  search  the  statute-books  of  the 
Romans  in  order  to  learn  what  this  body  had  to  do 
with  the  government  of  the  state,  it  would  seem  as 
though  a  seat  in  the  senate  was  a  sort  of  empty 
honor,  worth  striving  for  because  of  its  dignity,  but 
for  no  other  reason.  By  law,  the  only  powers  of 
the  senate  were  the  patrum  auctoritas,  by  which 
is  meant  the  right  of  confirming  a  law  or  election 
made  in  one  of  the  popular  assemblies,  and  the 
right  of  administering  an  interregnum  when  there 
chanced  to  be  a  lapse  in  the  regular  order  of  suc- 
cession to  the  consulship.  No  statute  can  be  found 
which  enlarged  the  sphere  of  the  senate  beyond 
these  original  limits ;  and  more  than  that,  these 
powers  belonged  as  exclusively  to  the  patrician 
members  down  to  the  time  of  the  empire  as  they 
had  at  the  outset.  No  senator,  however  noble, 
was  at  all  concerned  with  either  of  these  things 
unless  he  was  of  patrician  blood,  but  this  made  no 


n8  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

difference  to  him  because  these  functions  were  of 
no  value.  An  interregnum  was  a  very  remote  pos- 
sibility in  a  state  where  the  consul  held  over  by 
law  until  his  successor  was  appointed ;  and  at  le.ast 
as  early  as  339  B.  c.  it  was  provided  in  the  same 
way  that  the  senate  must  ratify  in  advance  all  the 
laws  and  plebiscites  of  the  popular  assemblies.  A 
little  later  a  similar  preliminary  indorsement  was 
required  of  it  in  the  case  of  elections  also,  until 
these  original  and  traditional  powers  were  nothing 
but  empty  formalities  which  were  observed  simply 
because  the  Romans*  respect  for  the  past  forbade 
their  disregarding  them.  The  senate  was  a  nullity 
in  the  state,  therefore,  on  this  side,  at  the  time  of 
the  second  Punic  war.  But  from  another  side,  as 
we  shall  presently  show,  its  sphere  had  grown  and 
extended  until  all  the  legislative  and  executive  busi- 
ness of  the  government  was  transacted  at  its  dicta- 
tion. This,  however,  was  entirely  at  variance  with 
the  theory  of  the  constitution,  which  made  the  popu- 
lar assemblies  the  ultimate  source  of  all  authority 
in  the  state. 

4.  The  Popular  Assemblies  enumerated. 
— To  repeat  in  a  consecutive  way  what  has  been 
given  in  the  preceding  chapter,  there  were  at  this 
time  four  of  these  popular  assemblies  which  exer- 
cised real  or  nominal  legislative  functions.  In  the 
order  of  their  institution,  as  far  as  this  can  be 
learned,  they  were  the  comitia  curiata,  the  comitia 
centuriata,  the  concilium  tributum  plebis  or  plebeian 
assembly  of  the  tribes,  and  the  comitia  tributa,  in 
which  both  patricians  and  plebeians  had  votes. 


GOVERNMENT  OF  ROME.  119 

The  comitia  curiata  had  primitively  been  a  purely 
patrician  organization,  but  after  a  reform,  conject- 
ured to  have  been  made  about  the  end  of  the  regal 
period,  the  plebeians  had  gained  admission  to  it. 
This  change  made  it  a  democratic  body,  in  which 
the  unit  was  the  curia.  In  historical  times,  how- 
ever, it  met  only  to  sanction  certain  forms  of  adop- 
tion or  the  restoration  of  a  returned  exile  to  his  clan, 
and  to  confer  the  imp e Hum  on  the  magistrates.  But 
this  in  reality  amounted  to  little,  because  the  grant 
of  the  imperium  was  never  refused,  and  so  few  of 
the  citizens  attended  the  meetings  that  thirty  lictors 
usually  represented  the  thirty  curia  and  transacted 
business  for  them.  All  the  real  power  enjoyed  by 
the  people  was  exercised  in  the  comitia  centuriata, 
in  the  separate  plebeian  assembly,  or  in  the  patricio- 
plebeian  comitia  tribitta.  The  organization  of  all 
these  bodies  at  the  time  under  consideration  was 
dependent  on  the  division  of  the  people  into 
tribes.  It  is  necessary  at  this  point,  therefore,  to 
discuss  somewhat  further  the  nature  of  a  tribe. 

5.  The  Composition  of  a  Tribe.— We  have 
seen  that  the  four  city  tribes  were  dated  by  the 
Romans  from  the  time  of  Servius  Tullius,  that  is, 
from  very  remote  antiquity.  The  seventeen  coun- 
try tribes  took  their  names  from  the  principal  clans, 
and  were  believed  to  be  only  a  little  younger. 
Others  were  from  time  to  time  created  in  the  terri- 
tory earliest  conquered,  until  the  number  thirty-five 
was  reached.  This,  as  already  stated,  was  never 
exceeded.  All  these  tribes  were  primarily  nothing 
but  territorial  divisions.  All  the  land  holders  in  a 


120  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

certain  district  were,  from  that  fact,  members  of 
the  same  tribe,  and  at  first  it  was  possible  for  a 
man  to  change  his  tribe  by  changing  his  residence. 
Afterward,  however,  when  the  number  of  tribes  had 
nearly  reached  its  maximum  limit,  this  was  altered. 
The  inhabitants  of  whole  cities  were  now  assigned, 
once  for  all,  to  a  particular  tribe.  A  man's  posi- 
tion in  a  tribe  ceased  in  this  way  to  be  dependent 
on  the  situation  of  his  estate,  and  became  personal 
and  hereditary.  It  still  continued  necessary  for 
him  to  be  a  freeholder  in  order  to  enjoy  member- 
ship in  a  tribe  ;  but  if  he  gave  up  his  farm  near 
Tusculum,  for  example,  and  secured  another  near 
Formiae,  he  and  his  descendants  none  the  less  be- 
longed to  the  Papirian  tribe  along  with  the  rest  of 
the  people  of  Tusculum  who  had  not  changed  their 
residence.  This  reform,  too,  was  accompanied  by 
efforts  to  somehow  include  in  the  tribal  organiza- 
tion those  who  were  not  freeholders,  in  order  that 
they  might  be  liable  to  active  service  in  the  army. 
For  this  purpose,  in  312  B.  c.,  Appius  Claudius 
placed  their  names  in  the  list  of  voters,  allowing 
them  to  select  which  of  the  tribes  they  would  be 
numbered  in.  This  secured  them  the  right  of  suf- 
frage, but  at  the  same  time  imposed  on  them  the 
various  burdens  of  citizenship.  A  few  years  after- 
ward, Fabius  Rullianus  assigned  them  all  to  the 
four  city  tribes,  and  this  arrangement  was  finally 
established  as  the  rule. 

6.  The  Censors'  Control  over  the  Tribes. 
— Claudius  and  Fabius  had  the  authority  to  make 
these  innovations,  because  at  the  time  they  were 


GOVERNMENT  OF  ROME.  121 

censors,  and  the  censors  had  entire  control  over 
the  organization  of  the  tribes.  This  gained  them 
great  power,  and  the  means  of  giving  positive  effect 
to  their  jurisdiction  over  the  morals  of  the  com- 
mon citizens.  At  first,  by  way  of  punishment,  they 
could  exclude  a  man  altogether  from  the  tribes  ; 
and,  after  the  changes  just  detailed  had  been  made, 
they  could  take  him  out  of  his  proper  tribe  and  put 
him  in  one  of  the  enormous  city  tribes.  His  indi- 
vidual vote  would  count  for  little  here  in  determin- 
ing the  vote  of  the  tribe.  His  political  influence 
would  thus  be  made  very  small  in  those  assemblies 
which  were  based  on  the  tribal  arrangement.  These 
were  from  the  outset,  of  course,  the  concilium  tribu- 
tum  plebis  and  the  comitia  tributa,  and,  after  a  re- 
form of  uncertain  date,  the  comitia  centuriata  also. 
The  details  of  this  reform  are  much  too  obscure  to 
be  considered  here,  but  enough  must  be  said  to  show 
that  the  comitia  centuriata  was  not  the  same  organi- 
zation all  through  the  history  of  the  republic.  For 
one  thing  it  was  now  provided  that  a  fixed  number 
of  centuries  should  be  taken  from  each  tribe.  The 
arrangement  of  the  centuries  into  classes  on  the 
basis  of  age  and  wealth  was  thenceforth  made  within 
each  tribe  separately,  and  the  marshaling  of  all  the 
citizens  in  a  body  for  this  purpose  abandoned. 
The  same  number  of  votes  was  also  given  to  each 
of  the  five  classes  at  this  time.  This  was  an  im- 
portant change  in  a  democratic  direction.  There 
had  been  no  class  distinction  of  any  kind  in  the 
assemblies  of  the  tribes  from  the  first,  but  in  the 
comitia  centuriata  the  richer  men,  though  far  less 


122  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

numerous,  had  possessed  a  controlling  voice.  After 
this  reform,  however,  the  votes  of  the  knights,  the 
first  class  and  the  second  class  combined,  did  not 
make  a  majority,  but  those  of  the  third  class  had 
yet  to  be  taken  before  a  decision  could  be  reached. 
Finally,  under  the  original  constitution  of  the  as- 
sembly, the  equites  had  enjoyed  the  privilege  of 
voting  first  on  any  measure  which  came  before  it. 
The  equites  at  this  period  consisted  of  senators 
and  young  nobles  of  wealth,  who  could  always  be 
relied  on  to  look  out  for  the  interests  of  the  nobili- 
tas.  Their  having  this  priority,  therefore,  secured 
a  great  advantage  for  the  aristocracy,  because  the 
cue  was  often  given  to  all  the  centuries  which  fol- 
lowed by  the  way  in  which  they  treated  a  proposi- 
tion. The  right  was  now,  however,  taken  from  them 
and  assigned  to  a  century  chosen  by  lot  from  the 
first  class,  and  called  the  centuria  prczrogativa. 

7.  The  Theoretical  Powers  of  the  Popu- 
lar Assemblies. — To  continue  our  summary,  these 
three  assemblies — that  is,  the  comitia  centuriata,  the 
concilium  tributumplebis,  and  the  comitia  tributa — had 
all  the  right  of  making  laws.  The  comitia  centuriata 
was,  at  first,  the  only  legislative  body,  and  contin- 
ued for  some  time  to  be  the  principal  one.  The 
concilium  plebis  seems  to  have  obtained  the  full  right 
of  independent  legislation  by  the  Hortensian  law, 
passed  about  287  B.  c.  The  activity  of  the  patricio- 
plebeian  comitia  tributa  dates  from  the  time  of  the 
fall  of  the  decemvirs,  when  the  quaestors  were  made 
elective  magistrates.  These  were  from  the  begin- 
ning chosen  by  the  whole  people  assembled,  not  by 


GOVERNMENT  OF  ROME.  123 

centuries,  but  by  tribes.  Laws  began  also  to  be 
brought  before  this  assembly  soon  after  the  institu- 
tion of  the  prsetorship.  In  later  times,  the  more 
important  laws  were  far  more  commonly  passed  in 
one  or  the  other  assembly  of  the  tribes  than  in  the 
comitia  centuriata,  because  they  could  be  got  to- 
gether with  fewer  and  less  burdensome  formalities. 

The  election  of  the  higher  magistrates  (the  con- 
suls, praetors,  and  censors)  remained  the  sole  right  of 
the  centuriate  assembly,  while  the  inferior  officers 
(the  quaestors  and  curule  sediles)  were  selected  by 
the  tribes.  The  election  of  the  plebeian  magis- 
trates (the  tribunes  and  plebeian  aediles)  took  place, 
of  coarse,  in  the  plebeian  assembly. 

The  declaration  of  an  offensive  war  was,  at  all 
times,  made  only  by  the  comitia  centuriata,  but  it  was 
the  comitia  tributa  which  was  consulted  about  con- 
cluding a  peace  or  forming  an  alliance  when  these 
things  were  referred  by  the  consuls  to  the  people. 

If  one  sentenced  to  capital  punishment  took 
exception  to  the  judgment  of  the  magistrate,  his 
appeal  had  to  go,  according  to  the  laws  of  the 
Twelve  Tables,  to  the  comitia  centuriata.  But,  if  it 
were  merely  a  fine  which  was  involved,  an  appeal 
in  such  case  commonly  went  to  one  of  the  assem- 
blies of  the  tribes.  If  the  tribunes  or  plebeian 
aedile  had  imposed  the  fine,  the  appeal  was  taken 
to  the  plebeian  assembly;  and,  otherwise,  to  the 
full  assembly  of  the  whole  people. 

8.  The  Magistrates'  Control  over  the 
Popular  Assemblies. — This  exhibit  of  the  con- 
stitution and  powers  of  the  popular  assemblies 


124  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

shows  the  truth  of  the  statement,  made  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  chapter,  that  the  government  of 
Rome,  at  the  time  of  the  second  Punic  war,  was  in 
theory  a  democracy.  Every  man,  freeholder  and 
non-freeholder,  could  vote  in  all  the  legislative 
bodies,  and  the  vote  of  one  man  counted,  in  gen- 
eral, for  as  much  as  that  of  another,  except  so  far 
as  the  size  of  his  tribe  made  a  difference.  Besides 
this,  the  executive  officers,  being  chosen  for  brief 
periods  by  the  people,  were,  it  would  seem,  simply 
their  representatives,  while  the  senate's  legal  power 
of  veto  was  only  a  formality.  The  accuracy  of  all 
this,  however,  as  a  statement  of  the  theory  of  the 
government,  is  not  at  all  inconsistent  with  the  fact 
that  the  real  power  belonged  entirely  to  the  nobilitas. 
Part  of  the  explanation  is  to  be  found  in  the  pecul- 
iar power  of  a  magistrate  in  a  Roman  popular  as- 
sembly. His  position  is  not  to  be  thought  of  as 
like  that  of  a  chairman  in  one  of  our  town-meetings. 
The  Roman  magistrate  called  and  adjourned  the 
assembly  as  he  pleased.  He  framed  the  proposal 
which  he  laid  before  the  people  according  to  his 
own  ideas,  and  simply  allowed  them  to  indorse  or 
reject  it  as  it  stood.  The  assembly  had  no  right 
of  free  debate  and  no  power  of  amendment.  In 
general,  particularly  after  the  Roman  territory  be- 
came so  extended  that  it4  was  quite  impossible  for 
all  the  citizens  to  gather  in  the  capital,  the  presid- 
ing magistrate  seems  to  have  had  the  assembly 
pretty  completely  in  his  own  hand.  Even  in  an 
election,  which  was  the  principal  manifestation  of 
actual  power,  the  consuls,  who  always  presided,  ex- 


GOVERNMENT  OF  ROME.  125 

cept  in  the  case  of  the  election  of  tribunes,  could 
exert  very  great  influence  on  the  result.  They 
could  even  go  so  far  in  this  direction  as  to  refuse 
to  receive  votes  for  a  candidate  who  was  obnoxious 
to  them.  The  powers  of  the  assemblies  are,  in  this 
light,  to  be  regarded  as  in  the  main  practically 
powers  of  the  magistrates,  who  had  the  right  of 
calling  them  together.  Now,  the  jus  agendi  cum 
populo,  the  right  of  calling  together  the  whole  peo- 
ple, and  with  them  passing  resolutions  binding  on 
the  whole  community,  belonged  at  first  to  the  king, 
and,  under  the  republican  constitution,  to  the  con- 
sul, praetor,  dictator,  and  magister  equitum,  as,  also, 
during  the  period  of  their  existence,  to  the  de- 
cemvirs and  the  consular  tribunes.  The  jus  agendi 
cum  plebe,  which  was  just  as  effective,  belonged  to 
the  tribunes  of  the  people.  The  concilium  plebis 
was,  therefore,  the  legislative  organ  of  the  tribunes. 
The  comitia  centuriata  was  regularly  made  use  of  by 
the  consuls  only,  though  probably  the  praetor  had 
the  theoretical  right  of  summoning  it.  The  comitia 
tributa  of  the  whole  people,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
employed  freely  as  machinery  for  this  purpose  by 
either  consuls  or  praetors. 

9.  The  Senate's  Control  over  the  Magis- 
trates.— The  magistrates,  in  this  way,  exercised 
a  control  over  the  popular  assemblies  which  was 
quite  contrary  to  the  theory  of  the  constitution, 
but  they,  in  their  turn,  were  subject  to  the  power 
of  the  senate,  which,  we  have  seen,  was  the  organ 
of  the  nobilitas.  It  will  be  remembered  that  along 
with  the  rights  of  the  senators,  even  under  the  regal 


126  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

constitution,  there  was  put  upon  them  the  duty  of 
advising  the  king  whenever  he  saw  fit  to  consult 
them.  It  was  for  this  purpose  that  the  conscripti 
had  originally  been  called  in  to  assist  the  patres, 
and  the  patrician  and  plebeian  members  of  the  sen- 
ate stood  on  an  equality  in  the  discharge  of  this 
duty.  From  so  simple  a  beginning  were  developed 
the  enormous  powers  which  the  body  subsequently 
held.  As  the  pater  familias,  before  he  put  a  son 
to  death,  was  expected  to  get  ths  advice  of  a  coun- 
cil composed  of  his  fellow-clansmen  (gentiles),  so 
the  king  was  expected,  in  all  important  matters,  to 
consult  his  council  of  experienced  old  men.  In  the 
time  of  the  republic  no  change  was  made  by  law  in 
the  principle  that  the  senate  should  give  advice  to 
the  magistrate  only  when  asked  for  it.  But,  as 
every  man  who  had  held  a  curule  office  gained 
from  this  fact  a  seat  in  the  senate,  the  senate  came 
to  be  composed,  by  a  sort  of  indirect  election,  of  the 
best  men  in  the  state.  Its  leaders  were  nobles  who 
had  been  trained  from  boyhood  in  the  principles  of 
government.  They  had  all  had  the  benefit  of  ex- 
perience in  administration.  Every  great  general, 
all  the  men  who  had  acquaintance  with  foreign 
countries  from  having  lived  in  them  as  governors 
or  embassadors,  every  wise  statesman  and  lawyer 
— all  these  were  sure  to  be  found  on  the  benches 
of  the  senate. 

10.  The  Senate's  Control  over  the  Magis- 
trates (continued). — The  moral  influence  of  such 
a  body's  opinion  was  irresistible.  The  consuls  who 
held  office  only  for  a  year,  and  therefore  had  no 


GOVERNMENT  OF  ROME.  127 

time  to  build  up  a  personal  ascendency,  found  it 
impossible  to  withstand   such  a  close  corporation 
whose  members  held  office  for  life.     And  so,  al- 
though  strictly,  according  to   law,  the  magistrate 
was  under  no  compulsion  to  summon  the  senate  nor 
to  follow  its  advice  when  he  had  obtained  it,  it 
became  thoroughly  understood  that,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  senate  was  to  be  carefully  consulted  and 
implicitly  obeyed.     Theoretically  it  was  not  a  legis- 
lative body.     The  popular   assemblies    alone   had 
the  power  to  pass  laws.     But  actually  the  assem- 
blies were  under   the   control  of  the  magistrates, 
and  the  magistrates  were  nothing  more  than  the 
commissioners  of  the  senate.     No  magistrate  would 
bring  a  law  before  the  people  without  first  asking 
the  senate's  advice.     There  every  bill  was  open  to 
free  debate,  and  the  vote  which  was  there  taken 
settled  the  question  of  its  passage.     If  the  senate 
decided  against  a  measure,  the  magistrate  would 
not  propose  it   to  the   people.     If,  on    the   other 
hand,  the  senate  favored  a  law,   out  of  the  many 
officers  who  had  the  jus  agendi  cum  populo,  or  the 
equally  effective  jus  agendi  cum  plebe,  it  was  not 
hard  to  find  one  who  would  carry  it  through  some 
one  of  the  popular  assemblies.     In  this  way  practi- 
cally all  the  legislating  in  the  Roman  state  was  done 
by  the  senate  at  the  time  of  the  second  Punic  war. 
ii.  The  Senate's   Executive  Power. — In 
the  matter  of  administration,  the  senate  maintained 
the  chief  power  in  two  ways.     In  the  internal  gov- 
ernment of  the  city,  it  relied  mainly  on  the  fact  that 
it  had  control  of  the  state's  finances.     This  was  the 
12 


128  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

result  of  a  gradual  usurpation  on  its  part,  but,  when 
perfected,  the  consul  was  the  only  officer  who  could 
draw  money  from  the  treasury  without  its  consent. 
And  there  was  a  limitation  on  his  power  in  this 
direction,  because  this  right  belonged  to  him  only 
when  within  the  city  in  the  discharge  of  civil  func- 
tions. But  here  the  institution  of  offices  like  the 
censorship  and  sedileship  had  transferred  all  the 
duties  which  involved  large  expenditures  to  magis- 
trates who  were  under  the  control  of  the  senate. 
In  foreign  affairs,  the  senate  got  very  wide  powers 
in  the  course  of  time,  from  the  right  which  it  had 
of  deciding  whether  war  should  be  declared  or  not. 
By  sanctioning  or  refusing  an  unusual  levy,  by  as- 
signing to  a  consul  his  field  of  operations,  or  by  send- 
ing instructions  to  the  commander,  it  directed  the 
conduct  of  the  war.  In  times  of  emergency  it  could 
supersede  the  consuls  by  directing  them  to  appoint 
a  dictator.  This  was  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
right  of  appointment  legally  belonged  to  the  consuls 
solely,  for  the  consuls,  under  the  force  of  custom, 
felt  themselves  morally  bound  to  submit  in  this  as 
in  other  matters  to  the  body  from  which  many  of 
them  were  selected  for  the  consulship,  and  in  which 
they  would  all  be  enrolled  at  the  expiration  of  their 
term.  Finally,  it  came  within  the  sphere  of  the 
senate,  thus  enlarged,  to  make  treaties  of  peace  or 
alliance,  to  receive  embassadors  from  foreign  states, 
and  to  send  them,  and,  when  Rome  began  to  form 
provinces  out  of  the  countries  she  conquered,  to 
devise  governments  and  provide  governors  for  them, 
12.  The  Rule  of  the  Nobilitas0— It  is  very 


GOVERNMENT  OF  ROME.  129 

obvious  from  all  this  that,  at  the  best  period  of 
Roman  history,  the  government  had  altered  very 
materially  from  its  original  pattern.  At  the  outset, 
it  had  consisted  of  three  co-ordinate  parts — the 
chief  magistrate,  who  executed  what  the  old  men 
advised  and  the  populace  ordered.  At  the  point 
which  we  have  reached,  one  of  these  three  depart- 
ments ruled  the  state  as  completely  as  the  House 
of  Commons  in  England  to-day  exercises  the  power 
which  it  theoretically  shares  with  the  crown  and 
the  House  of  Lords.  It  was  under  the  disinterested 
and  able  administration  of  the  nobilitas,  through  its 
organ,  the  senate,  that  Rome  advanced  in  greatness 
until  all  the  countries  which  bordered  on  the  Medi- 
terranean came  under  her  sway.  The  wisdom  and 
skill  of  the  senate  knit  together  the  empire,  thus 
formed,  with  bonds  which  were  flexible  enough  to 
be  just  and  yet  strong  enough  to  secure  its  integrity. 
In  the  most  trying  hours  of  Roman  history,  as  when 
Hannibal  was  advancing  on  the  walls  of  the  city, 
it  was  the  senate  which  devised  the  means  of  rescue, 
just  as  in  the  day  of  triumph  the  senate  rewarded 
the  victorious  general  with  the  right  to  lead  the  tri- 
umphal procession  up  the  Capitoline  Hill.  With 
the  lapse  of  years,  however,  the  problem  of  govern- 
ment increased  in  difficulty,  and  the  character  of  the 
men  who  had  to  solve  it  suffered  in  the  moral  decay 
which  came  over  the  Romans  in  the  century  before 
the  empire.  Italian  agriculture  was  crushed  by  the 
strength  of  foreign  competition.  Capital,  assuming 
enormous  dimensions,  blocked  commerce  and  traf- 
fic of  every  kind  against  the  small  dealer.  The 


Z3o  ROMAN  CONSTITUTION. 

dignity  of  labor  perished  because  all  the  trades  were 
filled  with  slaves,  and  the  city  populace  became  a 
rabble  living  on  politics  and  war.  When  the  sen- 
ate, which  was  itself  composed  of  a  different  class 
of  men  from  that  which  had  won  for  it  its  fame, 
found  itself  unequal  to  the  task  of  satisfying  the 
needs  of  this  clamorous  throng,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  of  directing  the  concerns  of  the  empire,  the 
rule  of  the  nobilitas  came  to  an  end. 

13.  The  Transition  to  the  Empire. — Then 
began  the  irresponsible  government  of  the  plebeian 
tribuneship,  which,  after  a  hundred  years  of  inter- 
rupted ascendency,  made  the  depotism  of  the  em- 
perors a  welcome  relief.  There  are  three  stages  in 
the  history  of  the  tribunate.  At  first  it  was  the 
chief  instrument  of  the  plebeians  in  their  struggle  for 
equal  rights.  During  the  best  period  of  Roman 
history  it  was  composed  chiefly  of  plebeian  nobles, 
and  was  the  main  reliance  of  the  nobilitas.  The  trib- 
unes had,  equally  with  the  consuls  and  praetors,  the 
jus  refer endi  ad  scnatum,  or  the  right  of  calling  the 
senate  together  and  laying  matters  before  it,  and 
the  senate  frequently  took  advantage  of  their  loyal- 
ty to  have  them  bring  before  it  subjects  on  which 
it  desired  to  vote.  From  the  time  of  the  Gracchi, 
however,  with  some  exceptions,  as  when  the  consti- 
tution of  Sulla  restored  the  government  to  the  sen- 
ate, the  tribunes  used  their  immense  power  in  reck- 
less violation  of  even  the  slight  restraints  which 
custom  had  put  upon  it.  In  the  period  before  the 
second  Punic  war,  there  are  occasional  instances 
when  the  popular  assemblies  under  the  leadership 


GOVERNMENT  OF  ROME.  131 

of  a  tribune  took  upon  their  shoulders  administra- 
tive measures  to  the  exclusion  of  the  senate.  So, 
for  example,  in  232  B.  c.,  at  the  instigation  of  Gaius 
Flaminius,  although  the  senate  opposed  it,  the  people 
pas.sed  an  agrarian  law,  dividing  among  themselves 
certain  lands  in  Gaul  which  had  been  acquired  in 
war.  Such  interferences,  however,  were  extraordi- 
nary, and  regarded  as  infringements  of  the  consti- 
tution of  the  state.  When  they  became  common, 
the  republic  came  to  an  end.  The  government  of 
the  senate,  in  the  last  years  of  its  power,  has  re- 
ceived the  just  censure  of  those  who  are  capable  of 
criticising  it.  But  the  rule  of  the  tribunes,  who 
voiced  the  caprice  of  the  city  rabble,  was  but  little 
better  than  anarchy.  The  ultimate  outcome  was 
the  establishment  of  the  empire.  Rome  thus  ac- 
complished the  circle  through  which,  in  theory,  all 
governments  tend  to  pass — monarchy,  aristocracy., 
democracy,  anarchy — and  began  the  round  again. 


THE   END 


OP 

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